Ghosts in the Machines
by T.Pike
Summary: Stan and Ford follow the anomaly tracker to Hurricane, UT, where rumors of possessed animatronics abound. Their investigations uncover the town's darker secrets. Part 2 of "Redacted" series, following "Aberdeen."
1. The Anomaly in Hurricane

Stan couldn't remember if he had been banned from Utah. Ford had passively assured him that he hadn't, but Ford had also sworn that hedgehogs couldn't swim. Despite Stan's active disinterest, they came to Washington County, in the southwestern corner of the state, to the small town of Hurricane, to satiate his brother's ravenous curiosity.

If the town was bigger than Gravity Falls or Glass Shard Beach, it wasn't by much. Nothing particular differentiated Hurricane from them, either, save the mountains in the distance. Stan vaguely remembered, years ago, walking down a nameless main street in some sleepy small town, staring at the mountains, rather stupidly surprised at how big they were; he was in Colorado, heading toward Denver (Estes Park, actually, now that he thought about it), and he was alone. That trip ended with him being banned from the state.

He decided not to tell Ford about it. Not when his brother's eyes glimmered in childish excitement like that, locked on the beeping GPS in his hands as it led through Hurricane. Bothering him, however, was not out of the question.

"Why do weird things only seem to show up in small towns?" Stan baited his brother with a mock complaint.

Ford kept focus on his GPS, his smile dipping only slightly at the remark. "Perhaps weirdness doesn't mingle well with humans. This way." He turned right at the intersection. "We should be close."

"Do you know what we're looking for?" Amidst the suburban strip malls and the moderate flow of traffic, Stan felt unsure. He didn't remember encountering any weirdness in Gravity Falls proper—any non-human related weirdness; there were plenty of weirdos in cities. Most of the sort of weirdness he and his brother hunted tended to stay away from people; from what he could tell, this was downtown Hurricane.

"No." Ford abruptly turned down another street. "The tracker only tells me where an anomaly is."

"Seems like an oversight."

"Nonsense!" For the first time, Ford looked up. He was absolutely beaming. "That would ruin the surprise!"

Stan groaned. How had Ford survived in the multiverse with that sort of cavalier attitude toward danger?

"Come, now, Stanley—where's your sense of adventure?"

"Back on the Stan o' War II, three states away."

Ford eyed his brother with a frown. "Don't be a spoilsport." When the GPS beeped again, his expression lightened. He stopped where he stood and pocketed the device. "This must be where the anomaly is."

They found themselves in the long-deserted parking lot of a standalone commercial building. Years ago, it had been a child-friendly pizzeria, since abandoned to time and left to rot. The presence of a couple of construction vehicles, a pair of oversized dumpsters, and various piles of materials nearby suggested that someone had recently taken serious interest in it again. Reconstruction clearly hadn't begun: the years of settled dust inside was visible from a distance, and the sign looked to be barely hanging on.

"Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, huh?" Frowning, Stan folded his arms. This place didn't unsettle him like many other "weird" places did, but it did make him wonder if his brother's tetanus shots were up to date.

Undeterred by the dilapidation, Ford had moved to the glass front, his face pressed against it, hands cupped around his eyes to block the sunlight's glare as he searched for some unidentifiable something. "I don't see anything."

"Yeah?" Stan watched the "z" in "Fazbear's" dangle from its perch, threatening to fall on his brother's head.

"It's too dirty." Knowing it wouldn't help, Ford futilely wiped at the glass. The thick layer of grime remained on the other side. "You've got a gift for this sort of thing, Stanley—how do we get inside?"

"I'm just gonna ignore that," Stan answered as he evened with him. Considering the door's lock, he determined that he could pick it without much trouble, given the right tools. "I'd need to get some, uh, supplies, but sure, we could get in."

Ford made an impatient noise. "Maybe there's another way?" He pattered to the side of the building, searching for another entrance. A back door, a broken or breakable window—something—

"Easy, Sixer." Stan grabbed his shoulder, gesturing to the front lot. "We know where the weird thing is now, right? Why don't we wait, go get some tools, and come back when it's dark? Y'know, so we don't get caught?"

"There's no one here—there hasn't been anyone here in decades!" Ford protested with a pout.

"Look, Ford, I'm just as excited about breaking into an abandoned pizzeria as the next guy, but unless you want to spend a night in jail, we can't commit crimes in broad daylight." Steering his brother back toward the parking lot, he continued, "Trust me, you don't want to get banned from a state. It's too limiting when you're trying to outrun the law."

Ford relented, reluctantly. He offered his brother a slight grin. "Sounds like you're speaking from personal experience." The statement had the slight lilt of a question.

"Sure. Did I tell you how I got banned from Louisiana?"

"You remember that, then?" Ford sounded surprisingly hopeful, considering the context.

"Vaguely." Stan waved the question off. "1978, it was Mardi Gras—"

A grey sedan pulled into the parking lot, prompting the twins to pause. Its driver exited the nondescript vehicle: a blonde man in his late twenties too preoccupied with a call to notice them.

"It's a dump," he announced unceremoniously into his phone. "Is this really the place?" He scowled while listening to the other line. "Yes—yes, it is that bad! Has anyone been inside since it closed?" Frustrated, he groaned, talking over the person on the other line. "Sentimental value is expensive, mum! This building will cost a fortune to repair and renovate and make—I don't know—make legally viable as a place of business, and don't get me started on the marketing." Biting his tongue, he made a few wild gestures of objection as the other person spoke. "Rumors don't die so easily. It's a small town, people know—people remember." He frowned and ran his free hand through his hair. "Well, no, I haven't spoken with anyone about it…Okay, mum, look, I'm standing outside the place now. Let me go take a look around. Yeah, I'll call Uncle William. Buh-bye." Grumbling, he stuffed his phone into his pocket and squared himself with the dilapidated building before him.

Only then did he notice the two men unapologetically eavesdropping on his conversation. Confused, he cautiously called out. "Can I help you?"

"You own this rat hole?"

"Stanley!" Ford hissed at his brother before stepping forward to address the stranger. Drawn to his full height with his hands clasped behind his back, Ford cut an imposingly confident figure. "Are you the owner of this establishment?"

"Not technically," the man answered. He glanced between the twins, still unsure. "My uncle is. But maybe I can assist you with…something?"

Ford nodded. "My brother and I are researchers—"

Stan snorted.

"—and we've been led to this location. There's been some anomalous activity at this site that we wish to investigate."

"Oh-oh, yeah?" The man had paled. Struggling to keep his posture open, he shifted his weight from foot to foot and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "What have you heard?"

The twins exchanged a glance.

"Nothing," Ford eventually answered, his authoritative tone disappearing. "My anomaly detector led us here."

Stan smacked himself in the head. "Yeah, Poindexter, that's gonna go over well."

Relieved, the man smiled. "That's great. I thought—never mind that, what was that about an anomaly detector?"

"We study the supernatural." Nerdy excitement wormed onto Ford's face, seriousness vanishing, as he fished around his pockets to find the device; when he found it, he moved closer to the stranger to share. "I invented this device that detects 'weird' activity. Something in your building is emitting a curiously strong aura, and we wanted to investigate—"

"You really have no idea how to talk to people, do you?" Stan shoved his way in front of his brother, conman's smile in full effect, hand extended in greeting. "Stan Pines, professional paranormal puncher. This is my brother, Ford."

The man shook his hand. "William Afton, Fazbear Entertainment." His nervousness disappeared, replaced with amiable ease. "So, you're paranormal investigators? Like that fellow on Ghost Harassers?"

"Something like that, probably." Stan jerked his thumb toward the former pizzeria. "Any chance you'll let us in to take a look around? We'll probably break in on our own, otherwise."

With a pensive noise, William considered the situation. "I'm not sure…"

Ford cleared his throat. "Mr. Afton—"

"Please. My uncle is 'Mr. Afton.' You can call me Bill."

"That's not happening." Shaking his head, Ford continued. "William, you mentioned earlier that this building has some unsavory history. Perhaps our investigation could prove to be useful in your marketing endeavors?"

William's interest visibly piqued. "Well, Mr. Pines, let me talk with my uncle. I have to check on a few things now, but I'll get a hold of him this afternoon. Is there a number I can reach you?"

"Certainly."


	2. Doublespeak

"Hm. I don't remember that."

Ford wanted to be frustrated, to throw his hands up in defeat, to snap at his brother. But he had to be sure that Stan was messing with him this time.

A few weeks ago, he'd thought Stan was joking. It didn't help that he'd been passively curious about the tale for thirty years now (really, _chewed_ his way out of the trunk of a car? How did the mechanics of that scenario work?). Stan had finally remembered it—or, at least, remembered bits and pieces of it, enough to put the story together. Three sentences in, their temporary deckhand/guide entered the Stan o' War II's cabin, looking as if he'd been dragged from the ocean. He informed them of the state of the rigging and the weather and the set navigational course, and then disappeared to change into dry clothes. Ford returned to his brother, expecting to hear the rest of his memory. Sheepish, Stan told him he'd forgotten already. It took Ford far too long to realize that Stan wasn't joking.

Ford frowned. Until Stan tipped his hand, he'd have to treat it like any other lost memory.

"Did you remember it earlier?" he prodded, patient.

"Huh?"

"About Louisiana. You brought it up earlier; did you remember it then?"

Stan only blinked. He sat back against the headboard, mindlessly fiddling with his harmonica. "What about Louisiana?"

"You said something about being banned from Louisiana, Mardi Gras in, um, 1975…?" Usually, these little prompts were enough, when the lapses were short. It could only have been a couple of hours since they encountered the anomalous site, surely Stan would remember.

He shook his head. "Nope. I got nothin'." After another moment of consideration, he smirked. "But I do remember an incident in 1978 that may or may not have gotten me banned from the state."

Ford balked.

Stan burst into laughter, unable to contain his amusement any longer.

"Stanley! That isn't funny!" Ford flopped against the back of his chair, exasperated. "How am I supposed to know when you actually don't remember something?"

"Yeesh, Sixer, lighten up. It's a joke." Stan smirked, nonchalance personified.

When Ford made to respond, their cell phone's chime drowned out his protests. Stan fumbled with the device, only barely managing to answer the call. "Yello?" He paused. "Afton?" Recognition lit his eyes. "Oh, yeah, sure, from the pizzeria. What's the word?"

Ford flew to his brother's side, pushing himself close to listen, though still hardly able to overhear.

"Really?"

The voice murmured from the speaker; Ford could only discern a couple of words.

"We can probably swing that. When should we meet?"

"Stanley, give me the phone," Ford hissed, trying to grab the device.

Maneuvering to keep the phone out of his brother's reach, Stan continued the conversation without consulting his brother. "No problem. Let me get a pen—" He snatched a pen and a scrap of paper from his brother's pocket. "Okay, go ahead."

"Stan, what's going—?"

Stan batted Ford's hand away. "Uh-huh, I got it. We'll be there—bye." He stuffed the phone back into his pocket.

Ford immediately launched into a tirade of questions. "What happened? What did he say? Where are we going? Can we get into that building or not?"

Stifling his grin, Stan kept his expression innocent. "What building?"

"Stanley!"

* * *

The house Stan brought them to looked older than most of the downtown area, built before the corporations moved in. It sat just off the one highway that ran through Hurricane, across from a strip mall that hadn't been there even ten years ago. Most of the shops seemed generic and inconsequential enough, though the largest and brightest by far was Circus Baby's Pizza World—a clear competitor of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Odd that the town would have two child-oriented pizzerias.

"Looks like a place Mabel would like," Stan joked. If anyone in the world wore brighter colors or more glitter than the restaurant's clown mascot, it would be their great niece.

"Maybe we'll bring her here over the summer," Ford said, inattentive. The anomaly tracker beeped evenly; based on Ford's expression, it shouldn't be. "This isn't the same reading from earlier…curious…"

Stan peered over his brother's shoulder. The device showed a red dot on a black grid. How Ford could tell it was in any way different, he didn't know. He allowed Ford to fiddle with the anomaly tracker for a few moments, until the midwinter chill sent a shudder down his spine.

"Okay, Poindexter, put your toy away." Nudging Ford, he gestured toward the house. "You wanna find out about the other place, right?"

Ford begrudgingly silenced his anomaly tracker. "Yes, though you've yet to explain exactly what it is we'll be doing here." He stowed the tracker in his pocket. "Meeting with William, I assume, but beyond that, you've been uncharacteristically silent on the matter."

"You're not wrong." He led his brother to the door, knocking. "Bill didn't explain much—"

"Please don't call him that, Stanley."

"Right. Sorry." Shifting, Stan rubbed at the back of his neck. A thought rolled on tip of his tongue, but it died to allow a more insipid one to pass. "Man, I need to get a haircut. There's no excuse to have a mullet twice in your life."

Ford forced a weak chuckle. "Does it count if you can't remember the first time?"

Caught off-guard, Stan couldn't help the barking laughter that tore from his throat. He barely managed to get himself under control by the time William answered the door.

"Sorry about the wait—come in, come in." The young man ushered the twins into the house. Inside, the warmth was immediate, courtesy of the wood stove in the adjacent sitting room. "I was just putting the kettle on; tea should be ready in a few minutes." He brought the twins into the sitting room and indicated the large sofa. "Please, sit; I'll grab Uncle William." As he walked off, he shook his head, murmuring about him "always tinkering" with "those things" in the garage.

Left alone, the Pines shrugged and sat on the sofa. It was old, upholstered in a warm twill; built sturdily, but still conforming to them when they sat.

"Ma had a couch like this, didn't she?" Stan's confusion tried to hide behind a joking tone.

Ford nodded, a light smile tugging at the corner of his lip. "Yes, in the living room, right in front of the TV." A quick glance around the wood-paneled room confirmed his brother's suspicions. "The whole room is strangely similar. Seems Mr. Afton hasn't updated his décor in decades."

The tension in Stan's body relaxed at the affirmation. "Least I won't be wondering about that instead of paying attention."

"You won't pay attention, regardless—"

William's voice carried from down the hall. "I wish you would put a heater in, at least, if you're going to spend all your time there." The responding voice was soft, nearly inaudible until its owner entered the sitting room.

"…for that. It's plenty warm." William's companion, perhaps twice his age, walked with distinct purpose. Even as he sat down, he moved decisively, almost stiffly. The Afton familial resemblance, unlike the Pines', was subtle: the green hue of their irises, the subtle upturn of their noses, the odd grace of their wrists—details only distinguishable to an attentive scrutiny. Though he held a genial disposition, smiled pleasantly, rested with an ease diametrically opposed to the way he moved, the elder Afton exuded an air of exhaustion. Sleepless nights had hollowed and drawn his face. His eyes, however, were alive, somehow desolate and determined, somber and thrilled. This was a man on the verge of a breakdown.

The Pines knew too well the sort of mania that drove a man like this.

"My nephew tells me that you gentlemen have an interest in my restaurant?" He spoke in dulcet tones, his accent softening the harsh sounds of the consonants. "I must say, Mr. Pines, Mr. Pines, it's been an age since anyone has shown curiosity about that place."

"Yes, Mr. Afton." Adjusting his glasses, Ford leaned forward. "You see, my brother and I are researchers of the supernatural—" A light flickered in Mr. Afton's eyes "—and we think there's some sort of anomaly in your restaurant."

"To be frank, Mr. Pines, there is. Perhaps, rather, there are." Mimicking Ford's movement, he too leaned in, conspiratorially. "There are ghosts in the machines."

The kettle whistled from the kitchen.

"Billy, please, the tea." Mr. Afton glanced to his nephew.

William exited the room with a frown, saying nothing.

His uncle tutted. "My nephew doesn't believe, but he knows the rumors and how superstitious the people of Hurricane can be."

"It is haunted, then?" Ford clarified, excited. "The restaurant?"

"The restaurant? No, though rumors will say otherwise. It's the machines themselves—the animatronics."

Stan groaned before he could stop himself. "Haunted animatronics?"

Mr. Afton mistook the meaning of Stan's outburst. "It's odd, yes, but surely not something beyond your realm of expertise?"

"I've punched a few animatronics in my day—" Ford pinched the bridge of his nose, grumbling to himself as his brother carried on "—and none of them have been exactly pleasant." Stan folded his arms with a scowl. "Those things are jerks."

"I know a few people who may be inclined to agree with you."

In the ensuing pause, William returned, carrying a tray of tea paraphernalia. He set the tray on the table, took one of the cups (one that seemed to be made up already), and sat in the chair beside his uncle's.

Ford took one of the cups, thanking William, and returned his attention to Mr. Afton. The anticipation glimmered in his eyes. "You said 'animatronics,' plural. How many animatronics are in there? How long have they been there, for that matter? Are they still functional? Do you know what's haunting them? Are you sure they're haunted—?"

Stan grabbed his brother's shoulder. "Easy, Sixer."

The elder Afton smiled. "Yes, there are multiple animatronics locked in that location; Billy was kind enough to ensure that the four of them were still there."

"They've been in there since the location closed," William added. "Those doors haven't been open in twenty years."

Ford withdrew a junk notebook and began scribbling information on the next available page. "What closed the restaurant originally?"

"A health code violation." William glanced at his uncle, as if asking permission. With his blessing, William continued. "Following some…incidents…"

Despite his better judgement, Stan held his tongue. He could recognize a code word for murder when he heard it—and based on Ford's hesitant expression, so could he.

"They were unrelated," William insisted with strange vehemence. "Back then, the building's security came courtesy of an outside vendor—a different one than we use now. Apparently, they weren't very vigorous with their psychiatric evaluations…One of the daytime security guards was implicated in the disappearance of five children at that location."

"Implicated?" Stan repeated, not hiding his incredulity. Shouldn't someone have at least been tried for a bunch of kids going missing like that?

"Charges were never brought against him—insufficient evidence, I believe. They never did find the culprit." William sipped at his tea, taking time to assemble the next sentence in his head before speaking. "There was also a problem with one of the animatronics…Someone was…hospitalized…"

"It was an accident," Mr. Afton clarified. "The spring locks didn't lock as well as we thought. They got wet, and, when they released and the endoskeleton returned to its proper positioning, they crushed what was left within. Bone and all."

"Wait, what—?"

"Spring locks?" Ford's inquiry readily overshadowed his brother's. Either he hadn't heard the last comment or he wasn't interested.

"A proprietary design of Henry's, quite an impressive little device. Early designs allowed the animatronics to function in two ways: as traditional animatronics, or as mascot suits." An old pride lifted the elder Afton's spirit visibly. "They were brilliant. A bit hefty, but quite practical. The spring locks held the endoskeleton at bay, allowing enough room for a performer to fit inside the suits."

The pen never ceased its scribbling; Ford's noise of comprehension could barely be heard over it.

"That location closed for the investigations and never reopened," William said in summary. "We haven't had any restaurants under the Freddy Fazbear name open in Hurricane since then, but Uncle William thinks it's time to open the doors again."

"If you were interested in investigating the rumors, I could see my way toward allowing you access to the location," Mr. Afton offered.

Ford barely contained his excitement.


	3. Into the Pizzeria

Stan kicked at what little paint remained on the parking lot asphalt. It was cold. Not as cold as it had been in the North Atlantic, but cold enough for the previously damp ground to freeze. Cold enough for him to shiver. Ford had been shivering, too, earlier, but so absorbed himself in his musings that he seemed to forget whatever physical distress he felt.

"I wonder what would cause the hauntings," he murmured to himself, for perhaps the third time since they reached the restaurant that evening.

"Probably the child murders." Stan clenched his fists in his pockets, but forced his voice to stay light.

Ford spared him a disgruntled look. "Thank you for the astute assessment. But why would they haunt the animatronics? Are the spirits necessarily related to the, ah, incidents? Maybe they're just wandering spirits—oftentimes, ghosts are drawn to places of strong feelings; they could be completely irrelevant. They may not even be possessed! Afton said they were prone to malfunctioning—"

Stan clamped a hand over his brother's mouth. A genuine smile tugged at his lips. "I get it, you're a huge nerd, how 'bout you reel that in for a few minutes? Driving me crazy over here."

With a roll of his eyes, Ford responded; Stan's hand muffled the words.

"Sure, buddy." Stan didn't sound convinced. "When's B—William supposed to get here?"

Ford's answer was incomprehensible until Stan remembered to remove his hand. "He should be here presently."

Stan stared at him. "Who talks like that—?"

A pair of headlights drew their attention to the parking lot's entrance. The nondescript vehicle from earlier pulled up beside them, its motor dying almost immediately. A bit harried, William hopped out of the car; he hefted a file box from the passenger's seat.

"I'm not sure what you might need," he apologized as he handed the box to the twins. Stan took it, visibly surprised at the weight. "I'm not sure what exactly is in there, either. I grabbed whatever old papers I could find in the office and Mr. Henry's garage—seems most of his effects have already been handled—but there's all manner of things in there. Hopefully something in there proves helpful."

"Thank you, William." Ford eyed the box with curiosity. He eagerly returned his attention to William when the younger man stepped toward the pizzeria.

"I can show you around, if you like," he offered. Fishing around his pocket, he found the door key. "It's not a particularly large building, but it can't hurt to know where you're going." The key turned with a heavy clunk, the tumblers still unaccustomed to movement. The hinges, also unprepared to move again so soon, groaned with effort as the door pushed open.

Despite the visit earlier that afternoon, thick dust coated the spacious dining area. Both the door's track across the threadbare carpet and William's footprints stood out against the grime, even in the dim light from the parking lot. Paper hats and plastic tablecloths, once brightly colored, still decorated the dozen tables for the birthday party they missed by twenty years. Once they reached the nearest table, the twins could see the simple stage, the animatronics patiently waiting for the show that never happened.

"This is the dining area," William explained. With a slight frown, he glanced around the room. "There was to be a birthday party…but the doors never opened that morning." He shook his head, moving toward the stage. Gesturing quickly to the nearest door, he said, "Behind that door was the 'backstage' area, where the animatronics were usually kept overnight, where they were repaired, and where employees would put on the costumes."

Ford scribbled notes in his journal, beside a primitive layout of the building that, so far, had only labeled the dining, stage, and backstage areas.

When William stepped onto the stage alongside the animatronics, the twins followed. Stan scrutinized them with displeasure, nudging one with his foot to check its stability; as he expected, it was solid. Ford, meanwhile, had abandoned his notes to draw the animatronics with exacting detail, including every stain, tear, and scratch.

"This is Freddy." William put a hand on the middle one, a brown bear in a top hat. He put his other hand on the yellow chicken. "This one is Chica." Gesturing to Freddy's other side, he indicated the one Stan had kicked—a blue rabbit with a guitar. "And that's Bonnie. He was always my favorite."

Stan made an unimpressed noise. "There's only three here," he noted. "Where's the other one?"

"Still in Pirate's Cove. This way." The wistful smile lingered on his face as he led the twins into an alcove, just beyond the backstage area. It was a small space, separated from the main dining area by a starry purple curtain, currently pulled closed and marked "Sorry! Out of order". William pulled the curtain aside, just enough to reveal the animatronic stationed there: a fox with a hook hand and eyepatch. "This is Foxy the Pirate." An amused chuckle hung in his throat. "He used to frighten me as a kid."

Already in Foxy's face for his journal entry, Ford noticed the sharp teeth. "I imagine many kids had the same fear."

Stan kept his distance. He was not keen on antagonizing anything with teeth like that.

"Down the west hall, here…" Flagging them onward, William led the twins past the dining area, through a linoleum-floored corridor—"That's just a supply closet, there on the right; it might not even be unlocked"—to an office. It was perhaps the smallest room they'd been in so far, cramped with filing cabinets and cluttered with garbage. William didn't have much to say about the office space, instead leading them through to the east hallway; no rooms budded from that hall.

Back in the main dining area, William pointed out the last remaining areas: the kitchen, behind a pair of swinging doors, and the restrooms, in a small hallway off the east side of the room. "And that's it, really," he finished lamely. He strolled toward the exit, again withdrawing the key. "You'll have limited power for the night—until we get something worked out with the power company, the building is running on a generator. I imagine you won't need much energy, regardless, just for the lights, maybe the security cameras."

"We'll be fine, don't worry." Ford brushed off the power concern, practically shoving William out the door. "If there's any problems, we'll let you know."

"I, um, will need to lock the door behind me," William added, his hand already pushing the door open. "For your safety. Don't want anyone getting in here that shouldn't be."

Ford had stopped listening in his excitement. "Fine, fine, we'll see you in the morning, then. Good night, William." He pulled the door shut, waved happily, and turned to his brother, giddy. "Okay, Stanley, let's get to work."

"Does that work include putting this box somewhere?" Stan held the box of mysterious papers out to his brother. "I'm getting real sick of carrying this around."

"We can put it in the office." Buoyant, Ford headed back to the furthest room. "With the way the building was closed, there may still be some interesting documents in there."

Stan rolled his eyes, following. "Leave it to you to want to dig through corporate legal papers instead of checking out the haunted robots."

"They're animatronics—and, apparently, rather advanced ones, at that."

"Not really that different. Still hurts when you punch it."

When he reached the office, Ford clicked on the lights. "I wouldn't advise punching them. You heard what Afton said about the spring locks."

Stan sighed, dropping the box at his feet. "Sounded like it was only a problem if you were inside the thing."

"Then don't stick any appendages you would miss into them." Ford gestured for Stan to follow after him. "I think the first thing we ought to do is investigate the animatronics themselves, see if there are any alternative explanations for their 'ghostly' activity. Then, I suppose, we'll have to observe any strange activity for ourselves, though I'm not sure how best to incite such actions—we may just have to wait around and hope something happens. And we'll have to go through all the paperwork; there must be some useful information…"

"You make it sound so thrilling." Stan ignored the irritable glower his brother gave him, fixating on the animatronics on stage. He neared Freddy the way he would have a real bear—slow, cautious, and aware of how bad an idea it was.

Ford struggled to suppress his giggles. "Stanley, you know it's not real, don't you?"

"Look, the last time I tangled with an animatronic, it nearly killed me." An exaggeration, of course, but if he hadn't happened on Goldie at that moment, it may not have been. "I'm not giving another one the same chance."

Ford made a note to run that story by Dipper and Mabel during their next conversation; they'd give a more realistic account of whatever happened. He watched his brother gently prod at the bear, tensing in anticipation of a reaction each time, and receiving none. After a few exploratory pokes and nudges, Stan relaxed.

"Seems safe enough," he decided. "Either it's not bothered by anything, or it's not haunted." His face crinkled with disgust. "Though it smells like something died."

"They have been wasting away for twenty years in an abandoned, dilapidated pizzeria." Ford took his brother's assessment as an invitation to initiate his own study. When he evened with Stan, the smell of rot assaulted him. "Ugh, it reeks!"

"What did I _just_ say, Sixer?"


	4. Night One

" _Uh, hello? Hello, hello?"_

Time couldn't move slower. Stan would swear that it had been days, but the clock only read midnight—three, four hours, tops, since they returned. Absolutely nothing had happened since.

" _Uh, hello and welcome to your new summer job at the new and improved Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Uh, I'm here to talk you through some of the things you can expect to see during your first week here and to help you get started down this new and exciting career path."_

Nothing, except his brother's discovery of some old cassettes in the office. There must have been dozens of them, stuffed in the desk drawer, though only a handful had any sorts of labels; the labeled ones claimed to be training tapes. Ford fixated on them for a few moments as he debated on how useful they might prove—a process which, by itself, Stan could swear took at least twenty minutes. When he finally decided that, yes, he did want to listen to them ("after all, any information about how these animatronics ought to be functioning should prove useful in determining what behavior would be considered 'haunted'"), Ford refused to sit still until he found a player. The older twin tore the already disheveled office further apart until he found one. That it was sitting in the same drawer as the tapes and that Ford had overlooked it for half an hour were irrelevant facts.

" _Uh, now, I want you to forget anything you may have heard about the old location, you know. Uh, some people still have a somewhat negative impression of the company. Uh... that old restaurant was kind of left to rot for quite a while, but I want to reassure you, Fazbear Entertainment is committed to family fun and, above all, safety."_

The tapes played continually; Stan had stopped hearing the short pauses when Ford switched them at their end. All the recordings had been made by the same person, his metered voice either reading from a script or poorly improvising from a set of notes. As neither of them could discern any order from looking at the tapes, Ford played them at random, destroying any sense of coherency. Just a constant stream of corporate chatter and instructions.

" _They've spent a small fortune on these new animatronics, uh, facial recognition, advanced mobility, they even let them walk around during the day. Isn't that neat? But most importantly, they're all tied into some kind of criminal database, so they can detect a predator a mile away. Heck, we should be paying them to guard you."_

Once he'd found the cassette player, Ford dropped himself onto the sturdiest box he could reach, pulled out his junk notebook, and hadn't stopped writing. He must have been the only person to ever be excited about or interested in these training materials. Stan, however, had grown bored. There were only so many times he could look over the junk in the room—the crayon drawings of the characters done by the child patrons, the promotional posters that would make any employee cringe, the twenty-year-old fast food trash, the desk fan that he didn't remember turning on, the boxes of paperwork, and, the thing that had kept his attention the longest, the security camera feed.

In total, there were fifteen cameras; eleven of them showed the interior of the restaurant. The live feed could have been replaced with pictures without Stan noticing, for all the movement happening there that night. He'd hoped, initially, that something might happen—he didn't know what, exactly, but _something_ —but time wore on and the static images in the monitor remained unchanged. He propped his feet up on the desk and leaned back in his chair. Maybe he could nap without Ford noticing.

" _Uh, now that being said, no new system's without its... kinks. Uh... you're only the second guard to work at that location. Uh, the first guy finished his week, but complained about... conditions. Uh, we switched him over to the day shift, so hey, lucky you, right? Uh, mainly, he expressed concern that certain characters seemed to move around at night, and even attempted to get into his office."_

Stan snorted. "Yeah, I bet."

Ford shushed him.

" _Now, from what we know, that should be impossible. Uh, that restaurant should be the safest place on earth. So, while our engineers don't really have an explanation for this, the working theory is that... the robots were never given a proper 'night mode'. So, when it gets quiet, they think they're in the wrong room, so then they go try to find where the people are, and in this case, that's your office. So, our temporary solution is this: there's a music box over by the Prize Counter, and it's rigged to be wound up remotely. So just, every once in a while, switch over to the Prize Counter video feed and wind it up for a few seconds."_

"What is he talking about?"

Ford stopped the tape. His frown was hard to read. "I…don't know. The animatronics, at some point, seemed to be not only able but allowed to roam the restaurants—"

"That's a law suit waiting to happen."

"—but I don't understand what he means about the music box." Ford glanced at the monitor over his brother's shoulder, adjusting his glasses. "Is there a feed for the Prize Corner? Or anything, anywhere, about a music box?"

Stan shook his head. "No. I didn't see one when we were walking around, and there's definitely not one on camera."

"What's this one?" Ford pointed to a feed showing darkness and, occasionally, static.

"Kitchen," Stan read off the monitor. "Camera's disabled, but I guess you can still hear sound out of it."

"Hm." Ford's brow furrowed. Toying with his extra digit, he dropped his gaze again to the cassette player. "Maybe the tape comes from a different site? A sister location in a larger building, with a different setup?"

Stan shrugged. "Could be."

Ford made a pensive noise and pressed the play button again.

" _It doesn't seem to affect all of the animatronics, but it does affect... one of them. Uh, and as for the rest of them, we have an even easier solution. You see, there may be a minor glitch in the system, something about robots seeing you as an endoskeleton without his costume on, and wanting to stuff you in a suit, so hey, we've given you an empty Freddy Fazbear head, problem solved! You can put it on anytime, and leave it on for as long as you want. Eventually anything that wandered in, will wander back out."_

"Wait, what about stuffing—?"

"Hush, Stanley, the tape's almost done."

" _Uh, something else worth mentioning is kind of the modern design of the building. You may have noticed there are no doors for you to close, heh. But hey, you have a light! And even though your flashlight can run out of power, the building cannot. So, don't worry about the place going dark. Well, I think that's it. Uh, you should be golden. Uh, check the lights, put on the Freddy head if you need to, uh, keep the music box wound up, piece of cake. Have a good night, and I'll talk to you tomorrow."_

The tape player clicked as it reached its end. This time, Ford didn't immediately replace it.

"There are doors to this room, aren't there?" Ford glanced to the place where there should have been doors. There were none visible—nothing hinged to the walls.

Stan leaned over to the wall, where the switch for the light was. There was another button above it labelled "Door" that he hadn't given much thought; he pressed it.

A steel door flew down, hitting the floor with a dense thud. Simultaneous shouts of "Holy Moses!" accompanied the metallic noise.

"Well, we have doors," Stan finally announced as he removed his hand from his heart.

After recomposing himself, Ford stood and shuffled to the door. He knocked lightly on it, examined it for a moment, then hit the green "Door" button again, watching the door disappear back into the ceiling. "Three-inch steel doors." He poked his head into the hall, checking around the doorway. "Only sealable from within the office." Back in the room, he sat back onto his box. "The last time I saw a room like this, I was in a prison in Dimension CR-82'5—it was the only safe room, meant to keep guards safe in case a riot got out of hand."

"Why would a pizzeria have space-prison doors?"

"That would be the question." Ford sighed. He popped the cassette out of the player, looking it over. It had no markings on the label. "At least we know this tape comes from another location. I wonder why it's here…" He scribbled something on the label, added the same thing to his notes, and looked to his brother. "This seems far more complicated than Afton let on."

"Yeah." The response was distant; at some point, Stan had stopped listening. He stared intensely at the monitor.

"Stanley?"

"We didn't walk by the restrooms, did we?" He didn't move his eyes from the screen.

Ford peered over his brother's shoulder, glancing between the screens, unsure which camera he needed. "No, we didn't."

Stan pointed at camera 7's screen. "There's footprints."

Two distinct sets of footprints tracked down the corridor: the first were clearly William Afton's, his sneakers left the same pattern across the rest of the restaurant; the second, however, were less identifiable, larger, with distinct toe markings. One of the animatronics had walked that hall at some point—either in the afternoon, following William's initial walkthrough, or earlier in the night, after William had locked them in.

"Did you see anything?" Ford leaned forward, scrutinizing the screens. Most of them were too dark to discern any real details.

Stan shook his head. "I've been watching them all night. None of 'em have even twitched, let alone walked around."

"Can we turn any lights on?"

Glancing over the security monitors, Stan found a remote light switch. The room in the monitor lit up dimly, dust refracting the light as it settled back to the ground.

"I don't see anything moving," Ford murmured, his brow knit. He studied the grainy security footage, searching for any indication of anything amiss. Interestingly, the camera indicated the correct date and time, as if it had been running for the past twenty years. "Do you see anything?"

"Nope." Stan's gaze had drifted from camera 7, shifting between the other monitors. He paused on camera 1a. "Ford?"

"Hm?"

"How many animatronics were on the stage before?"

Ford finally looked up from the camera. "Three."

Stan pointed to the monitor. "Looks like one of them went for a walk, then."

"Really?" Ecstatic, Ford followed his brother's gesture. There was indeed one animatronic missing—the rabbit. "Where did he go?"

An unsure noise caught in Stan's throat. "I dunno. I don't see him anywhere." His eyes flit across the different monitors, hoping to catch a glimpse of the animatronic. Nothing had been disturbed in any of the screens; the longer he searched, the less he was convinced he was watching a live feed of the restaurant.

"How could such a hefty machine move so quickly without making noise?" Ford's eyes also darted between the screens. The rabbit remained obscured, though he was able to find extra sets of footprints he hadn't noticed earlier: across the dining area, in the west hallway, and, albeit fractionally, in the storage closet. Bonnie may as well have evaporated for all the sense the empty monitors made.

"Hm." Stan frowned and finally tore his attention from the security footage. His hand reached out to the wall switches, hovering between the "Light" and "Door" buttons. When he finally accepted that he couldn't see through the blackness on his own, he clicked on the hall's light. There in the doorway stood the missing animatronic, silently staring into the office.

"Oh, look, Stanley, there it is."

Stan slammed the other button. The door crashed into the floor. For a moment, the twins sat stunned.

"Why the hell didn't he show up on the monitor?!" Stan glared out the small window at the rabbit. Bonnie stared back, unfocused eyes still glassy underneath twenty years of dust.

"Must be a blind spot in the security cameras," Ford murmured, mostly to himself, as he scribbled something in his notebook. Once finished, he leaned over his brother to better observe the animatronic in the window. "Why was it waiting there so patiently?"

"Who cares?"

"I'd like to call this a confirmation of a haunting, but the training tape would be a rather pointed source of disagreement." Habitually, Ford clicked his pen. "It did say that the animatronics were drawn to sounds. Strange, though, that all the internal electronics and mechanisms still work enough to allow it to ghost its way around the pizzeria—could that be evidence that it's haunted? Mr. Afton did say that the mechanics were, ah, weak—surely that must mean—"

Stan clamped a hand over his brother's mouth. "Can it, Poindexter."

Ford complained, his words only a garbled noise. His brother answered him in a hush.

"You said it's drawn to noise, right? If you shut up for a minute, it might go away."

Again, Ford protested, wanting to observe the animatronic in the window further.

"Shut up, Ford." Anticipating his brother's comment, Stan reached over and shut the light. The hallway was again cast in darkness. They waited, silent but for the hum of the desk fan, unsure if anything would happen. Stan hoped his brother had a backup plan; he already knew how well his punching plan would turn out.

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long. Soft footsteps padded down the corridor, evenly pacing their way down the west hall. When he couldn't hear the animatronic anymore, Stan clicked the light on momentarily. Bonnie wasn't there. A quick check of the monitor revealed that he was in the dining area again, though not in his original position on the stage.

"I can't believe that actually worked." Stan removed his hand from his brother's mouth, using it to cradle his head. After a moment, a smile cracked onto his face. "At least those things aren't smart, huh?"

"Was that necessary, Stanley?" Ford adjusted his glasses, frowning. "It was right outside the office, perfectly positioned for observation."

"No, not really, just saving your life, that's all."

"You don't know that. Who's to say that the animatronics are malicious or violent?"

Stan groaned, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Why else would they be haunted?"

"Not all ghosts are malevolent spirits. Most of them, in fact, aren't—they're quite often more annoying than anything else." Ford dropped onto the box he had been using as a chair, turning his displeased glower to the security feed. There, in camera 1b, stood Bonnie, looking surprisingly lost amidst the dusty party decorations. Even through the monitor, there was something unsettling about those glassy, unblinking eyes.

Ford leaned back to retrieve his notebook. The sound of soft footsteps caught his ear. Curious, he glanced back to the monitor. Bonnie hadn't moved from his position in camera 1b.

"Do you hear that, Stanley?"

"Hear what?" Stan looked up from where he had slumped over the console.

"More footsteps." The excited lilt in his voice lowered to confusion in the last syllable. "But Bonnie is still in the dining area."

Stan's eyes flicked through the cameras quickly, pausing on the stage camera, before returning to his brother. "Try the light," he suggested warily. "I think another one went for a walk."

Altering his reach, Ford stretched to the east wall and clicked on the light. The bright yellow chicken appeared in the doorway, prompting the twins to yelp, startled.

"Shut the door, Sixer!"

"Nonsense." Recovering from the fright, Ford pushed himself to his feet and stepped around some of the office clutter to approach the motionless animatronic. He pulled the journal from his coat, flipped through the pages, and returned to the place he had begun drawing hours ago, during their tour of the building. "They've shown no signs of aggression so far; we have no reason to assume—"

Chica lunged through the open door, beak wide, teeth barred. Her assault stopped short with a metallic thud; Stan's punch sent the animatronic stumbling back a step, just far enough to allow Ford to slam the door down.

"I will cede that the animatronics may have some aggressive tendencies." Ford wrote the note in his journal and waited for his brother to finish swearing before speaking again. "Let me see your hand. Does it hurt?"

"I just punched a robot in the face—of course it hurts!" Scowling, Stan put his left hand out for inspection. "I told you those things were dangerous."

"Hm." Ford elected not to indulge in his brother's petulance. He instead carefully removed the brass knuckles from Stan's hand before the swelling could become a problem (the blood certainly helped, little though there was). Following a cursory inspection of the damage, he bandaged the wound and allowed his brother his hand. "Nothing seems to be broken."

"Good." Stan glared out the office window; Chica had disappeared. A quick glance at the monitor indicated that she was further down the hall. "Next time, I'm letting it eat you."

"Animatronics don't _eat_ people—"

"'Bone and all,' he said!" Stan folded his arms. "It would've ripped you apart! How did you survive on your own for so long?!"

Ford shook his head. "We'll just have to be more careful for the rest of the night."

"Rest of the night? Why don't we just leave, like sane people?"

"Yes, the Pines family has always been the picture of mental health." The wry smile that had crawled onto Ford's lip disappeared almost immediately. Ford quieted his embarrassment with a cough. "About leaving…"

Stan waited.

"…Well…" Ford shifted. "We can't, frankly."

"Yeah?"

"The door is locked."

Stan snorted. "And me without my keys. Damn." Groaning, he flopped back into his chair. "So, what, we're just gonna ride the night out in the bunker?"

As Ford opened his mouth to answer, the office lights flickered, and the generator outside shuddered with a heavy clang. "I forgot about the generator." He clicked the wall switches, shutting the hall lights and opening the doors. "We must be using so much power. The generator can't sustain that for the rest of the night. We need to be more conservative."

Though still visibly agitated, Stan leaned back in his chair. "How hard could it be? It's just until morning."


	5. Incidents and Accidents

It wasn't the first night that either Pines twin spent sleepless, silent, or hidden from some manner of creature. Though the security cameras showed a time stamp and the animatronics hadn't been active for at least forty-five minutes, neither recognized when morning came until Stan caught sight of a car pulling into the parking lot. Ford gathered their things while Stan watched the monitor.

William hadn't come alone. Another young man, only slightly older than William, had joined him; though the camera outside recorded no noise, the dark-haired man raved continuously at William, visibly aghast about something. For his part, William only answered as absolutely necessary, avoiding the other man's eye. He reached the front door, unlocked it, and entered the restaurant.

"—completely irresponsible!" The other man's voice, sharing the same accent that William and Mr. Afton did, carried to the back office. "What if there were another 'accident' on the premises?"

William's response was inaudible, more of a sigh than words.

"Oh, I'm sure."

William ignored the other man as he stepped further into the building. He raised his voice, calling loud enough to be heard in the office without the security cameras' assistance. "Stanford? Stanley? Hello?"

"We're still in the office," Ford responded. He stifled a yawn. "Just gathering our materials."

Stan stood and stretched, his back cracking loudly. "Can't say this was worse than sleeping in that Colombian prison," he grumbled. "Least this place has a chair."

"And when we get back to the hotel, you can sleep in a real bed." Ford picked up the file box, which had remained untouched for the night and now held the cassette tapes and player, and nodded toward the door. "Let's go."

Stan led his brother down the corridor, into the dining area. William stood with his arms folded, eyes closed, weary of the lecture he was still receiving; he didn't notice when the Pines entered the room.

"Good morning," Ford greeted, causing William to jump.

"You seem to have had a long night." William glanced between the pair. "Any news?"

"The good news is: we're not dead," Stan said. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Bad news is: robots are definitely haunted."

"Animatronics," Ford corrected. "And they aren't 'definitely haunted.' Just…most likely haunted. I'd need at least another night's worth of study to tell for sure."

Stan balked. "Are you kidding—?"

"I'm sure Uncle William wouldn't mind," William answered. His hopefulness melted into worry, though he said nothing more on the matter. Instead, he gestured them toward the door. "For now, we should be going." As he stepped toward the exit, he returned his attention to his companion. "Mikey, come along."

The man continued investigating the animatronics, actively ignoring William's beckoning. A distant fondness softened his expression as he looked over the creatures, long forgotten memories curling his lip. He lingered over Freddy longer than the others, holding a hand up to the bear's withering face, unaffected by the rot.

"Mikey?"

"Has father seen them like this?" His eyes left the animatronic only long enough to ensure he'd captured William's attention. "In this state?"

William shook his head. "No. No one's been here except us."

The man didn't seem to agree. With a sigh, he left Freddy and friends on the stage and sauntered toward the door. "He won't be pleased."

"He won't have to see them. The technicians will have them functioning like new in no time."

"You lot." The man shifted his focus to the Pines twins. "Did they function? I don't imagine Freddy went anywhere, but the others…?"

"Yeah," Stan said before Ford could. He held up his bandaged hand. "That yellow one tried to get into the office."

"They're attracted to sound, Stanley, of course it tried to get into the office—we're the only things that have made noise in this restaurant for twenty years." Ford huffed. "Aside, you punched it, as I recall."

"Only because it was going to eat you—"

"Perhaps we should chat outside." William quickly directed the group beyond the pizzeria's doors. Despite the bright sunlight, the parking lot felt just as cold as it had the night prior. He locked the restaurant and pocketed the key, allowing himself enough time to redirect the conversation. "I'm afraid I haven't introduced you yet—Stanford, Stanley, this is my cousin, Michael. He has quite a bit of experience working with the animatronics; he may know what sort of malfunction would cause such behavior."

"Could be anything, really," Michael said. He ignored his cousin's displeased frown. "You said Chica tried to come into the office?"

"The rabbit, too," Stan offered. Ignoring Ford's attempt to protest, he carried on, "The other two didn't move, but these two spent half the night trying to get into that office! And they're _fast_ , too—couldn't catch 'em half the time on those monitors. The monitor for the kitchen is out, by the way. Least, the video is."

"The security cameras still work?" Michael sounded surprised.

"Uncle William suggested a generator for the building until construction proper could begin," William explained. "Don't know why, really; it's not like he was expecting anyone to be in there."

"You're awfully calm about these decrepit animatronics still functioning after so many years and showing signs of aggression." Ford's brow peeked over his glasses. "Surely they couldn't have been designed so well?"

"Mr. Henry's designs were masterful," Michael said. Shrugging, he added, "Aside, I doubt it's the mechanics making them move. Those machines are haunted. They're especially unkind toward anyone in the security office." He shot a dirty look to his cousin. "Bill shouldn't have let you stay there overnight like that. You're lucky they didn't do more damage."

William huffed. "They're not _possessed_ , Mikey—just—malfunctioning, I suppose. Mr. Pines just said they aren't necessarily haunted, and he's a professional on such matters."

"I'm reasonably certain that twenty years of tinkering with these machines would make _me_ an expert on them, Billy, and I'm telling you they aren't supposed to act that way, and there is _no_ explanation in the software or the hardware to make them do so."

"Don't be stupid; there must be something wrong with them. They didn't act that way before—"

"Thirteen missing children and a man hospitalized sounds a bit dodgy to me, don't you think?"

"Michael!"

Michael motioned to retort; on catching sight of their company, he clamped his mouth shut and stormed to the car. He slammed the door shut after flopping into his seat.

"Such a child!" William's scowl lessened as he turned back to the twins, both of whom had the wherewithal to say nothing during the exchange. "I'm sorry. Michael has a habit of emotional outbursts."

"Don't worry." Ford glanced at his brother. "I have family guilty of the same crime."

Stan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm the drama queen. Remember that time in sixth grade, when Crampelter called your science project stupid, and you had a fit in the bathroom? You were so mad—you kicked the stall door and _broke_ it."

Ford flushed, his face matching his sweater. "Yes, well, I honestly didn't think you'd remember that…"

"As if!" Struggling to keep his laughter under control, Stan clapped his brother on the shoulder. "I might not remember where I am when I get up in the morning, but I will never forget my nerdy big brother's most embarrassing moments."

"If only that memory had remained lost…" Whatever Ford grumbled under his breath was rendered inaudible when the car horn honked. From within William's car, Michael had laid on the horn and shouted something likely obscene to garner his cousin's attention.

William cradled his head in his hand. "You lot should get some rest. Let me speak with Uncle William and Michael—I'm sure I can convince them to let you stay another night, if you'd like." Though it was a sentence, it had the lilt of a hopeful question.

"Absolutely!" Ford answered before Stan could protest.

William beamed. "Wonderful. I'll phone you sometime this afternoon."

* * *

Stan woke sometime late in the afternoon, when the sun was well on its way back to the horizon. The clock on the nightstand told him it was half past three. He only vaguely remembered returning to the hotel; apparently, he at least had the sense to remove his boots and coat before collapsing onto the cushy mattress and falling unconscious. After returning his glasses to his face (they were resting, folded, on the nightstand, something he imagined Ford had done while he'd slept), he sat up to survey the room.

The file box sat beside the desk, open, its contents unsettled. Papers and tapes were strewn across the desktop, all precariously avoiding the three empty cups of coffee in the left corner. For some time after they returned, Ford had absorbed himself in the training tapes and miscellaneous documents, taking notes and formulating theories. Now he lay slumped over his journal, glasses akimbo, unwillingly asleep in the middle of a sentence. His pen had fallen to the floor. Some habits never changed.

Stan strolled past his brother, stopping only long enough to remove his glasses. Unsure what he could do to occupy himself and keep quiet, he decided to properly assess his injured hand; if they were returning to the pizzeria tonight (and, knowing Ford, they would return with or without permission), he'd need it in proper working order. He retrieved the first aid kit from their suitcase and fished out the scissors. Cutting away the bloodied bandage, he could see what damage remained.

All things considered, it wasn't bad: swelling, certainly, bruised slightly, and scraped just enough to bleed. His hand ached, but it didn't hurt. All of his fingers still moved with the same dexterity they always had. If the damage was consistent each time, he could afford to punch at least half a dozen more possessed robots before having to worry about it. He moved to rewrap it, just in case, but ultimately decided against it. Wouldn't be useful to put on a bandage to remove it when he showered.

Though still asleep, Ford vaguely heard his brother rummage around the room, a door clicking shut, and the water running in the next room. His body refused to cooperate with his mental mandate to wake. Obviously, coffee in this dimension was weaker than he remembered. For the moment, he resigned to napping on his journal. Again. Hopefully, this time, he wouldn't wind up covered in ink.

An annoying, electronic tune chimed from somewhere nearby. Ford wanted to ignore it, but he was reasonably certain that the tone indicated Dipper or Mabel on the line, and he lifted his head. Without his glasses, he couldn't see the phone, especially with Stan's habit of always putting the screen facing downward; he managed to find it after touching nearly everything on the desk first. He lucked into pressing the correct part of the screen to answer.

"Sta…" He yawned. "Stanford Pines."

" _It's Bill. Did I wake you?"_

Ford bolted upright, sleep vanishing instantaneously. "What?"

The voice on the other line paused, as if unsure. _"William. Er, William Afton?"_

Once the name properly processed, Ford exhaled and collapsed back onto the desk. For a moment, he feared… He tamed his voice to a more regularized tone. "Ah. Yes. Afton. Sorry. You startled me."

" _Didn't mean to wake you. I could call back later?"_

Ford shook his head before remembering that William couldn't see him. "No, it's fine, I'm up now. What can I do for you?"

" _Uncle William has granted you permission to stay another night at Freddy's."_ Barely, Ford could make out Michael's indignant protestation in the background. _"I could meet you and your brother at the restaurant later this evening to let you in."_

"Excellent." Ford did nothing to hide his yawn; it served as a long enough pause for him to gather his thoughts. "I've been reading through the papers you gave me."

" _Have they been helpful? I wasn't sure what you may need."_

"They've been exceedingly interesting. Perhaps when I've read through everything, I'd be able to speak with you or your uncle about them. Having a thorough understanding of the restaurant's history will be helpful in understanding the motivations of the ghosts, should that hypothesis pan out."

The voice didn't respond immediately. _"Yes, I suppose it would,"_ it finally decided. _"Uncle William is a bit busy today, handling contractors and some legal something or other, but I'm sure I can set up a time to speak…"_ Michael's voice in the background rose to a peak. _"Mikey, please—Mr. Pines, I'm sorry, I'll have to reach you later—I'll call you after dinner. Good afternoon."_ Michael's distant shout cut short when William ended the call.

With another yawn, Ford dropped the phone on the desk. He was awake, at least, and the conscious part of his mind adhered fanatically to the investigation at hand. His right eye hurt. He retrieved his glasses and returned to his journal; his notes seemed to stop partway through an explanation of the animatronics' typical behavior, according to the tapes.

 _The only information provided by these training tapes that S and I were able to confirm relates, fortunately enough, to the mascot. Freddy himself seems to be more or less inactive. We witnessed no movement or strange happenings about this particular animatronic, and the tapes agree that he doesn't "like to leave the stage." Even Michael noted that Freddy was unlikely to move. Odd that the namesake creature would be so loathe to interact with the customers. Maybe it likes the limelight? Do machines "like"_

He checked his cups for coffee. All of them were empty, but there was more to be made. As he turned the brewer on, he heard the water stop. By the time he retrieved his pen to finish the question, Stan returned to the room, clean, but still looking like he was homeless. He immediately went for the first aid kit, tending to his damaged hand.

"What's the word, Sixer?"

 _things in the same way that humans do? Is artificial intelligence as advanced in this dimension as the Android Dimension?_

Ford pushed his glasses aside to rub his eye. "We'll be back in the restaurant tonight."

"Legally? Two nights in a row? How lucky can a guy get?" The amused smirk on Stan's face dwindled the longer he watched his brother. "You, uh, doin' okay there?"

"I'm fine…" Removing his hand from his eye, Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. "I just…paranoid and tired…"

Stan waited for him to continue.

"William called, of course, and I thought…" Ford chuckled. "For a moment, I thought Bill was on the line."

Stan sat on the edge of the bed, silent for a moment. When Ford made to ask, Stan laughed and knocked on his head. "Nah, don't worry, Sixer. He's gone, along with all my memories from third grade and however I got Gompers."


	6. Night Two

There was time before their study needed silence, if the prior night's experience was to be believed. Nothing had tried to find them until after midnight; William had locked them inside sometime between eight and nine. Had they met any later, William feared, some in the town might notice, and Fazbear Entertainment wasn't yet ready to have prying eyes on their facility.

As Stan brought the file box back into the office, Ford investigated the motionless animatronics. Bonnie and Chica stood on the stage, just as they had for twenty years. Dust still rested on them, though, positioned on either side of Freddy, the amount of dust was visibly less, a result of their late-night tour of the building. Ford withdrew a pen light from his pocket, shining it onto Bonnie.

Bonnie did not move.

Ford was not surprised, though he was relieved that the creature didn't lunge at his face like Chica had. He found himself habitually investigating its eyes first: glassy and black, like the still ocean on a moonless night. Strangely, they appeared living the same way the ocean did, as if they were more than just plastic and polish, but actual, seeing things. He stepped over to Chica and checked her eyes, finding them just as uncannily alive.

All his experience with ghosts and possession told him to trust what he saw in their eyes more than any other evidence. But that didn't mean he wanted to stop the investigation. He would have to find some way to eject the spirits from the machines, of course, and there were other questions to be answered besides. Why did they only move after midnight? The witching hour had its fair share of social and superstitious significance across various cultures (and various dimensions, actually), but what caused these ghosts to be bound to it? For that matter, why were only Bonnie and Chica able to move? If the others could move, why hadn't they? Maybe they weren't all possessed…

He moved to Freddy, pen light at the ready. Once he wiped away the decades of dirt, he shined the light into its eyes. Just like Bonnie and Chica, those dark voids revealed something conscious, something aware. Freddy's possession raised more questions than it answered.

"Anything try to eat you?" Stan asked as he reentered the dining area. He approached his brother, though distinctly stayed off the stage.

Sighing, Ford chose not to correct his verbiage. "No. Come here and hold the light, Stanley."

"You sure it's a good idea to be in its face like that?"

"You kicked one yesterday and it didn't attack you."

Stan grumbled the whole way across the stage, and continued to do so as Ford handed him the light. "It still reeks," he decided. "You don't wanna wear a mask or something?"

"I'll be fine." Ford searched his pockets for something to use to investigate the animatronics, coming up with only his pen. It would have to serve—he wasn't about to put a finger near those spring locks, even if he did have extra. He peered into Freddy's jaw, examining what little he could of the endoskeleton, searching for the infamous spring locks. "Odd."

"You?"

"What—no, Freddy." Ford gestured for his brother to move the pen light. When nothing new revealed itself, he frowned. "William and Michael praised these machines so highly, but I don't see anything particularly unique or interesting here. I can't even find the spring locks they're so proud of."

"Maybe they're old models," Stan offered with a shrug. "Or maybe those guys are idiots and don't know one robot from another."

Ford made a noncommittal noise and motioned for Stan to return his light. "Perhaps. I'd like to take a look at the schematics; maybe there's just something I'm missing."

* * *

" _Hello? Hello? Uh, what on earth are you doing there, uh, didn't you get the memo? Uh, the place is closed down, at least for a while. Someone used one of the suits. We had a spare in the back, a yellow one, someone used it…"_

The cassette tape sat beside Ford's notebook, the recording playing barely loud enough for Stan to hear across the office. Not that Stan minded; something about the phone guy unsettled him. He much preferred to rifle through the file box's documents. They weren't interesting, but they weren't phone guy.

" _Now, none of them are acting right. Listen, j-just finish your shift. It's safer than trying to leave in the middle of the night. Uh, we have one more event scheduled for tomorrow, a birthday. You'll be on day shift, wear your uniform, stay close to the animatronics, make sure they don't hurt anyone, okay? Uh, for now, just make it through the night. When the place eventually opens again, I'll probably take the night shift myself. Okay, goodnight and good luck."_

"Used? Someone _used_ one of the suits?" Perturbed, Ford clicked the rewind button. "It's such an odd word choice to use for an animatronic. Maybe…maybe he means one of those spring lock suits? But I thought those were decommissioned? Is this tape from before they were decommissioned?" His thoughts descended into incomprehensible muttering and pen scratches. He stopped the tape at a random point and played it again.

" _Uh, just as a side note, though, try to avoid eye contact with any of the animatronics tonight if you can. Someone may have tampered with their facial recognition systems—we're not sure. But the characters have been acting very unusual, almost aggressive towards the staff. They interact with the kids just fine, but when they encounter an adult, they just…stare."_

Ford stopped the tape again. "Tampered?"

Pulling more papers from the box, Stan glanced at his brother. "So, what, someone made them violent?"

"Michael said the animatronics couldn't be programmed in such a way…" Ford made a note to ask Michael further about the tampered machines. "Aside, it's such an odd change to make. Why would they be aggressive toward exclusively staff?" He clicked his pen. "Though…he did say that they just stared at adults, not that they necessarily attacked them…" His questions again devolved into incoherent muttering and pen scratches.

"Sounds shifty to me." Stan sifted through the papers in his hands. As William had warned, the pages were indeed a hodgepodge mess at best. A few newspaper clippings (no years attached, of course) documented the opening, rumors, investigations, and closing of the pizzeria; some articles about other, similar restaurants had been mixed among them—Circus Baby's Pizza World, Chica's Party World—though they only noted openings and rumors of acquisition. There was only one actively irrelevant article, "Afton Robotics Institute Receives Funding from West Coast Tech."

The next few papers were corporate legal documents, pieces of acquisitions and mergers amidst tax write-offs from the late '90s; he did catch sight of a few liability wavers in the employee paperwork. Apparently Fazbear Entertainment could not be held responsible for Mike Schmidt's potential "accidents/injuries/death/irreparable and grotesque maiming." The Mystery Shack could be a safehouse compared to Freddy's.

A file folder rested at the bottom of the stack. Curious, Stan opened it. He didn't need to read much to recognize that it was a dossier for an unsolved murder: a John Doe victim, roughly 7 years old, found strangled outside a place called Fredbear Family Diner. The diner's owner found the boy's body hidden in the dumpster at 10:37 on the night of November 5 (the year was smudged—was it 1983 or 1987?). The Washington County Police Department could only gather fingerprints from around the boy's neck, though their indistinct markings led to no suspects or arrests.

"What do you have there, Stan?"

"Dossier." Stan summarized the homicide in as few words as possible, terse in his speech. "Not really sure why Afton has this. Pretty sure it's illegal to snatch something like this, especially since the case still looks like it's open. Even if it is thirty years old."

"Where did you say this happened?" Ford flipped through his notes; something in the details had caught his attention.

"Fredbear Family Diner."

With that information, Ford snagged a cassette from the stack. Stan could see that it had been labeled in Ford's hand, Training Tape, Sister Location (Night Shift) 5. Switching the tape into the player, he hit a button. Phone guy's strained voice filled the office.

" _Hello? Hey, good job, night five! Um, hey, um, keep a close eye on things tonight, okay? Um, from what I understand, the building is on lockdown, uh, no one is allowed in or out, y'know, especially concerning any…previous employees. Um, when we get it all sorted out, we may move you to the day shift, a position just became…available. Uh, we don't have a replacement for your shift yet, but we're working on it. We're going to try to contact the original restaurant owner. Uh, I think the name of the place was 'Fredbear's Family Diner' or something like that. It's been closed for years, though, I doubt we'll be able to track anybody down. Well, just get through one more night! Uh, hang in there! Good night!"_

"The Aftons must have bought that place out." Stan slid the news articles to his brother, glad to shift the topic. "I mean, they could've gotten it cheap, and a little rebranding goes a long way…" Memories of the StanCo line of products simmered in the back of his mind. Shaking them off, he delved back into the file box.

Ford wrote another question for their future interview with the Aftons. "Perhaps—Stanley, what time is it?"

Stan pulled whatever papers were in his hand from the box when he sat up to check the security camera's feed. "'Bout a quarter 'til."

"I probably have time for another tape…let's see…"

Stan cringed. He'd had more than enough of phone guy for one day. Hoping to find something to distract Ford until midnight, he glanced at the pages in his hand. Fortune had smiled on him. "Hey, Poindexter, check it out!" He practically threw the papers at his brother. "Blueprints!"

"Really?" Abandoning the unlabeled cassettes in his hands, Ford snatched the papers from Stan. His face brightened, smile growing the longer he looked at the designs. As a man who had created a trans-dimensional portal, he couldn't hold the diagrams in the same regard that the Aftons had, but it wasn't as if he couldn't see why they gave them such praise.

The animatronics had been drawn out with the sort of grace usually reserved for artists, pen guided by a doting hand. Every last piece, down to the screws and wires in the circuitry, were carefully captured on the page, labeled with small, scratchy writing. A list of materials adorned the bottom of the pages. These machines' construction, for what it was, really was elegant, reminiscent to the sorts of things Fiddleford had designed in their college years.

"There aren't any spring locks on these designs," Ford realized aloud. He flipped between the designs. "Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy—oh, look, there's alternate versions of them, as well."

Stan peered over his shoulder. Amazingly, studying his brother's trans-dimensional portal didn't equip him with the ability to fully understand the intricate designs in front of him; the artistic renditions of the fully built animatronics, however, did make sense to him. "Ugh. Toy Bonnie is the stuff of nightmares."

"Can't say I didn't see something like that in the Nightmare Realm," Ford agreed. "Do you think these ones were made?"

"Knowing my luck, yes."

"Are there any more schematics?" Hopeful, Ford glanced to the box. "Maybe earlier designs or other alternate versions…?"

Stan made a noise as he returned to the file box. For a few moments, he sifted through the papers; he stopped and craned his ear toward the door. "You hear somethin', Sixer?"

"Hm?" Glancing up from the schematics, Ford peered up at his brother. "No, I don't hear anything."

Stan wasn't convinced he didn't hear some kind of shifting. He glanced to the security monitors again, hoping that his imagination had run wild. Cameras 1a and 1b showed nothing noteworthy: Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy stood motionless on the stage, positioned just as they had been hours ago. Something about camera 1c unsettled him.

"Hey, Ford." He pointed to the screen; the starry purple curtain had been pulled aside to reveal the animatronic lurking. "Was that curtain always open?"

Ford blinked, lost in the shift in his attention. "I…don't remember. Maybe William opened it when he showed us around yesterday?"

"I don't remember…" With one last distrustful look at the monitor, Stan returned to the file box. He managed to find a few more blueprints. Two of them he vaguely recognized as variants of Foxy and Freddy; one, labeled "Baby," he was sure he'd seen somewhere before. The rest were a total mystery, something to keep his brother silently occupied for the rest of the evening.

Ford's eyes lit up as he snatched the papers. He couldn't have had the time to really assess them before gushing over them. "What interesting designs! Far more advanced than the others. Such a different aesthetic, too…are they by the same designer? I wonder…"

As his brother rustled through the blueprints, Stan strained to hear any movement in the restaurant. He couldn't shake the feeling that the curtain shouldn't be open. Maybe that animatronic had moved it? It was possessed, after all, it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. Was it wrong for him to assume that, because it hadn't moved yesterday, that it wouldn't move today? When he thought he heard footsteps in the hall, he glanced at the monitor.

Camera 1c was empty.

"Where'd it go?" Panicking, Stan flicked between the monitors, hoping to spot it somewhere. It couldn't have gone far—he'd only looked away for a second!

"Where'd what go?" Ford only removed his eyes from the papers in his hands for as long as it took to inquire about his brother's frantic motions.

"The fox!"

"Oh, Foxy is moving around?" Excited, Ford peered over his brother's shoulder. "Where?"

Stan balked. "Sixer, now's not the time!"

The twins froze at the clang of metallic feet running up the west corridor. In an instant, the missing animatronic appeared in the doorway. Unlike the others, he didn't wait in the darkness to be noticed. He rushed through the door—

Foxy met a boot to his chest and staggered back into the hall. He persisted, diving again, only to slam into the metal door. He tried again, and again, and again. When the door remained firmly closed, he skulked away.

Neither Stan nor Ford moved until they could no longer hear the animatronic's footfalls in the hallway. At that point, both leaned over the monitors to watch Foxy return to his place in Pirate's Cove and pull the curtain closed.

"What an odd display of privacy," Ford said, finally breaking the silence.

Stan groaned and collapsed into the chair. "This is going to be a long night." Scowling, he hit the wall panel, opening the door again. "And just what was he doing yesterday that he didn't try to murder me, huh?"

"Stanley, keep your voice down; you don't want to draw Bonnie and Chica's attention."

"Yeah, that shit show didn't make enough noise for them to notice." Suddenly doubting his own sarcasm, Stan's gaze lingered back to the monitors. Sure enough, neither animatronic remained on the stage. "You sure we can't just leave the doors down until morning?"

Ford shook his head. "The generator can't handle that much strain."

"Who designs a door like that?!"

* * *

If the office had windows, the Pines twins could have seen that the sky was beginning to brighten. Inside the building, however, there was no light: the generator had a hard enough time keeping the doors closed, keeping the lights on only taxed the machine to the point of overload. Ford had gone so far as to disconnect all but four of the security cameras to decrease their power consumption. It could have been three, but Ford insisted they leave camera 1c on Foxy for observational purposes. "Aside," he'd said, "I think he's shy. He doesn't seem as aggressive while being watched."

As the hour neared morning, the Pines sat in silence. Stan leaned back in the chair, arms folded behind his head, eyes closed, for all appearances asleep; the lack of his tell-tale snoring indicated to Ford that his brother was still awake, listening for the arrival of an animatronic outside the office door. Ford's attention fixated on the few working monitors; with Foxy still hidden behind the starry curtain, only the camera in the east hallway had anything in it.

 _5:54 a.m.: Freddy has returned to the hallway. As the training tapes have suggested, he is much more active in the dark; this is perhaps the fourth time he's appeared outside our door. He seems to enjoy staring into the corridor camera. It's as if he can see into the office through it, instead of the other way around. The only question I seem to have answered about this anomaly is whether or not it is an anomaly—a small token, really. Why would these four possessed animatronics give off such a strong signal? (Yes, they are possessed, you can tell by the look in their eyes—no yellow, I checked.) I do recall receiving another signal nearby, when we were at Mr. Afton's house yesterday; perhaps there are more mysteries to Hurricane than initially anticipated._

Ford turned his eyes to the monitors again. Freddy was no longer in the camera, likely returning the stage, as all the animatronics seemed to do when dawn approached.

Beside him, Stan chuckled. "Guess they're done with us for the night," he murmured with a yawn. "See William's car yet?"

"Not yet." Ford checked over the monitors one last time—both halls were empty, Foxy remained hidden behind his curtain—before raising the doors. Without such a burden on the generator, they could return the restaurant to its proper, lit state. Ford crawled beneath the desk to reconnect the security monitors, though paused when he thought he heard music. The sort of tinny music that played in a music box.

"Stanley?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are you playing the 'Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre' aria from Carmen?"

Stan eyed his brother sidelong. "I'm gonna ask you to repeat that question, slowly, and tell me why it's stupid."

Ford scowled and went about his work. "Well, Stanley, if I'm occupied reconnecting the security monitors and can't be playing music, it would make sense for me to assume that the only other person in the building would be responsible, wouldn't you think?" He connected the last wire, moving from under the desk, and met his brother's look. Or, tried to; Stan actively stared past him, into the hallway. "Freddy was hiding in the blind spot, wasn't he?"

"Shut the door, Ford."


	7. A History Lesson

Sipping at his fifth cup of coffee, Stan still struggled to stay awake. He watched his brother pace across the only open floor space in their hotel room and tried to focus. Since their parting from William that morning, he was sure Ford hadn't stopped talking; his theorizing had become a continuous droning that Stan found himself incapable of listening to any longer. All he could hear was the quickening and slowing of his brother's speech, the rise and fall of his volume, the shifts in his tone, though it only registered to him as white noise, like the tide on the beach—only truly noticeable in its absence.

"Huh?" Stan met Ford's expectant look with lost eyes. "Uh…you might wanna run that by me again. I wasn't listening."

Initially, Ford looked like he wanted to snap at his brother for not paying attention. He instead poured himself an eighth cup of coffee. "Let me give you the abridged version." He clasped his hands behind his back. "All ghosts have a purpose for their hauntings. Those animatronics are positively possessed by ghosts. Freddy Fazbear's Pizza has a history of unfortunate history of incidents. These incidents are known to the public, as evidenced by those newspaper articles at the bottom of the file box. My question is: why are those animatronics haunted?"

"The child murders," Stan answered, his attention threatening to drift again.

Ford ran a hand through his hair. "Yes, but there are four animatronics, and Michael let it slip that there were thirteen deaths."

The problem clicked. "Where are the others?"

With a smile, Ford nodded. "Precisely." He grabbed his coffee from the desk and gestured at the schematics strewn across it. "There must be other animatronics, but where are they?"

A frown wormed onto Stan's face. "The other restaurant."

"It would explain the secondary reading on my detector," Ford said. His expression came to mirror his brother's. "Our problem becomes twofold. Firstly, why are the animatronics still haunted? Secondly, how can we enter the other restaurant?" He coughed. "Legally or otherwise, of course."

"We can probably just ask Afton to get in there; I think they own that place, too." Vaguely, Stan gestured to the file box. "And didn't I just say why they're haunted?"

"The murders are the reason they were haunted initially…" Ford collapsed into the chair and cradled his head in his hand. "Were the murders ever solved? The perpetrator brought to justice? Is there something else happening? Vengeful spirits need to be placated before they can pass on." He reached for his journal, flipping through it with his free hand. "Even without necessarily solving whatever issue is keeping a ghost tied to this realm, merely bringing the problem to light can suffice. Dipper mentioned something like that about the Northwest case…"

"We're gonna solve some murders from twenty years ago?" Stan shrugged, sipping at his coffee. "Better than dodging haunted robots all night."

A yawn prevented Ford from correcting his brother. "We'll ask William about the incidents this afternoon. If our interview ends early enough, we can go to the other restaurant while it's still open." He mindlessly rubbed at his right eye. "I'll admit, I'd like to see the animatronics in their proper functionality. They must be a sight."

Stan made a mock pensive noise. "Hm, yeah. Two old men skulking around a children's restaurant, alone, when kids are running around unattended. Sounds like a great idea."

"When you put it that way, of course it sounds creepy!"

"Just ask B—"

"William—"

"—just ask him when we talk to him later." Stan drained the last of his coffee, checked the empty cup with disappointment, and sighed. "This coffee is useless. I'm gonna go to bed." Tossing his cup aside, he flopped back into his pillows. A chuckle huffed from the back of his throat. "I can't go for days without sleep like I used to—I'm old, I'm tired, I don't know how to motivate myself awake…" He tossed until he found a comfortable position. When he spoke again, his voice softened as if he were murmuring to himself, his words slightly muffled by the pillow. "It's not like I always have things haunting my dreams…"

Even before Ford could put a thought together, Stan waved off his concern.

"Not…" He shifted. "Not him. Everyone's got their own demons, y'know?"

Though his brother couldn't see, Ford looked away and putzed with his extra digits. "You remember yours, then?"

Stan either yawned or made a disinterested noise—Ford couldn't quite tell the difference and, honestly, hadn't noticed how similar the sounds were until that point. "A little. G'night."

* * *

"I think I've managed to put the story together."

Stan hadn't woken to the sounds of intellectual conspiracy in a long time; as he drew back into consciousness, he could hear Ford muttering to himself, the manic ramblings of a child uncovering the clues of a mystery novel. Vaguely, Stan could remember an eight-year-old version of his brother talking to a book at three in the morning, only for their dad to yell at him loud enough to wake the neighbor.

"Put what together, Sixer?"

Ford glanced over. "The restaurants, the animatronics—everything behind the hauntings. There are some missing details that I'll need Mr. Afton to fill in, but for the most part…" A smile tugged on the corner of his lip. "We'll bust those ghosts and be back to the Stan o' War II in no time."

A similar excitement bubbled within Stan. The hunt for a child killer would be a hell of a lot shorter than he anticipated. "That's the best thing I've heard since we got here. So, what's the story?"

"It's a little complicated…"

 _The story begins in a place called Fredbear Family Diner. It's a small establishment in Hurricane, Utah, owned and operated by Mark and Susan Cawthon. The family restaurant thrived for years with its unique attraction: an animatronic/mascot suit hybrid designed by one Henry, whose name adorns the schematics. After a mysterious death on the premises, business suffered, forcing the Cawthons to sell out to the young startup company Fazbear Entertainment, headed by the selfsame Henry and William Afton._

 _Fazbear Entertainment remarketed the concept of family-friendly animatronic entertainment. Henry developed other animatronics, though he dropped the spring lock design, instead opting for a more traditional design. Freddy Fazbear's Pizza became a franchise, locations opening across the southwest. Following an "incident" at the Hurricane location, another family-friendly pizzeria opened its doors—Circus Baby's Pizza World. Around the same time, something called the Afton Robotics Institute came to be; all I have managed to ascertain about the institute is that it conducts some sort of research, I have to assume on robotics._

 _When Freddy Fazbear's Pizza opened its doors again, Fazbear Entertainment bought out Circus Baby Productions._

Ford sighed as he glanced through his messy notes. Almost half of the page had been blacked out as he tried to wrap his mind around the company's history. "Things become…foggy…from here…most of the openings and closings don't seem to have much rhyme or reason to them…"

Stan massaged his temples. "I guess I can't be any more disinterested or lost than I am now," he grumbled, his words clipped.

Apparently not noticing his brother's patience wearing thin, Ford pressed on.

 _A few articles indicate that the Freddy's locations, despite the company's best attempts, were still rife with incidents and disappearances, including a maiming of a part-time employee (whether or not he survived is unknown). Fazbear Entertainment opened another chain called Chica's Party World, seemingly a ploy to keep the business that the Freddy's location was losing—the different name would likely distance the two restaurants. The Freddy's location in Hurricane closed following some "incidents" and health code violations. Somehow, Afton Robotics is related to these restaurants; I believe the technicians that keep the animatronics functioning properly are employees or students of the institute, but there is no paper trail to indicate whether this assumption is true._

 _In recent years, notably after the closing of the Hurricane Freddy's, rumors have developed about Circus Baby's Pizza World—disappearances and alleged incidents. Stories of haunted animatronics circulated in Hurricane since the first incident at a Freddy's location, though it seems that there were no definitive tales until that Freddy's location closed twenty years ago._

"What does any of that even mean?" Stan collapsed back into his pillows with a huff. "It's like a history lesson."

"Technically, I suppose, it is." Head in his hands, Ford read over the journal entry again. "There must be something to the town's rumors, or the animatronics wouldn't be haunted." He made a noise of resignation and frustration. "There must be something I'm missing…"

"And what does any of this have to do with the killer?" Stan shot back upright. "Or did you forget there was a child murderer running around town?"

Sighing, Ford lifted his head. "I didn't forget, Stanley. The murders are connected to whatever happened in these restaurants. If we can figure out what happened there, then we can find the killer." Before Stan could protest, Ford continued, "We don't have any other leads in the matter. I know it's…frustrating, but it's all we have right now."

Stan scowled, though said nothing in response.


	8. Child Murders and Haunted Animatronics

William Afton's house was as warm and welcoming as it had been the last time the Pines twins visited; a heaviness hung in the air that hadn't been there before, though, the sort of feeling that lingered after particularly nasty arguments. Ford felt it acutely, as stifling as it had been that night forty years ago. Despite the Aftons' silence on the matter, he felt their shouts continually reverberating off the walls, as though the fight hadn't paused for guests.

William's genuine confusion betrayed nothing, which only raised further questions. All he seemed capable of offering was the sort of excuse a child of a broken household might concoct: "Uncle William and Mikey have been bickering about something for quite some time; it's gotten worse since Uncle William decided he wanted to open Freddy's again."

"Yeesh." Stan rubbed the back of his neck, smiling with practiced sympathy. "How long is 'quite some time'?"

William initially answered with a defeated sigh and a head shake. "Maybe a year or so. Whatever it is, it wasn't a problem until Mr. Henry passed."

"Mr. Henry?"

"Yes, Henry Cawthon." With a quick glance to the kitchen, where the elder Afton busied himself with tea, William lowered his voice. "After the…incident…at Fredbear's, Uncle William and Mr. Henry bought the restaurant—Mr. Henry didn't want the animatronics to go to anyone else. He loved them like his own children." His mood darkened, jaw clenching as he physically bit back his next statement.

"I suppose a man's obsession could be detrimental to those around him." Ford coughed and adjusted his glasses, actively avoiding his brother's sidelong glance. "It's…unfortunate."

"Bit of an understatement, really." After a beat, William visibly shook off his sour mood. A forcibly cheery smile adorned his face by the time his uncle returned with tea. "You said you had some questions for Uncle William about Freddy's?"

A similar smile worked its way onto Mr. Afton's face as he set their drinks on the table. "I hope the animatronics didn't give you much trouble?"

Ford flipped through his notebook. "Yes, a moment…" As he struggled to find the relevant notes, he glanced to the older Afton. "I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, Mr. Afton, but it seems your animatronics are indeed haunted."

Mr. Afton was unfazed.

"In order to rid the animatronics of their ghosts, we'll need to know more about the incidents." On finding the proper page, Ford adjusted his glasses again (one of many nervous ticks he developed in his college years, needing to do something that didn't draw so much attention to his hands as he defended three doctoral theses in a week). He either didn't notice or didn't mind the stiffness that overcame the Aftons and continued. "These incidents, after all, are the cause of the hauntings."

Stan could swear that Mr. Afton had shifted; if asked, though, he couldn't clarify what exactly had altered about him. Mr. Afton's forced smile faltered slightly before he spoke. "Which incidents?" The question wasn't evasive.

"The, uh, deaths that prompted the restaurant to close." Ford glanced at his brother, who silently shrugged. "It's highly likely that the animatronics have been possessed by the victims; I believe they want their killer brought to justice. Perhaps they would be sated with a simple public accusation."

"Can't say I blame them," Stan added darkly, sipping at his tea.

"I would also like to know if you have any other animatronics." Ford clicked his pen, trying to keep his hands occupied. "With only four animatronics in the pizzeria, there must be others. Nine others, actually."

William shrank in his chair to avoid his uncle's sidelong glance.

"Why nine?" Mr. Afton kept his eyes trained on his nephew.

"There were thirteen deaths, I believe."

"What an ominous number."

"Mikey had one of his…outbursts…" William confessed. "Ranting about the Purple Guy Disappearances and Jeremy's, erm, accident."

Mr. Afton sighed heavily, shook his head, and returned his attention to Ford. The soul-crushing exhaustion that had weighed on him at their first meeting returned, his shoulders slumping. "I don't suppose, Mr. Pines, you would have any idea what it is to see your life's work betray you?"

It took every ounce of Ford's fortitude to refrain from meeting his brother's eyes. He remained focused on Mr. Afton, taking a deep breath. "I've experienced the harsh disappointments of a passion gone awry." His voice was tight, though measured. Maybe Ford couldn't lie well, but he could adeptly manipulate the truth.

"Henry had boundless imagination, keen mechanical skills, and a warm heart. He was the one who had the idea for Freddy Fazbear's." Mr. Afton sipped at his tea. "Apparently machines had always been a great love of his; he crafted his first fully functional animatronic in high school. Fredbear was a marvel of the time, beloved mascot of his parents' diner, and perhaps the only object of interest Hurricane had ever had." He watched Ford scribble in his notebook for a moment. "As you've likely discovered, there was an incident at the diner—a child's body was discovered there one night by Mr. Cawthon. No real closure ever came to the case; it ruined the reputation of the diner. Mrs. Cawthon told Henry that they needed to sell it and all its assets, and that was when Henry asked for my help. He couldn't bear the thought of parting with Fredbear or Spring Bonnie.

"We bought the restaurant from his parents. Henry tinkered away in his workshop, making different, better animatronics. Rebranding and marketing were my responsibility. About two years after the boy's murder, we opened Freddy Fazbear's Pizza." Mr. Afton relaxed into his chair, his half-filled cup still poised for further consumption. "It was quite successful. We franchised the restaurants, but Henry still insisted that he be the only one to maintain the animatronics. He wouldn't even train technicians for day to day wear and tear.

"I suppose that's why it was so startling and heartbreaking when the first disappearances happened…"

 _Five children disappeared at a Freddy Fazbear location. All that came of the investigation was one witness description of a suspicious-looking man in purple sneaking into the restaurant through a back entrance. Security camera footage showed someone in a mascot suit walking with five children into an "employees only" area. Neither the person in the suit nor the children appeared again._

 _In light of the disappearances and the rumors about the animatronics that followed, William founded the Afton Robotics Institute, with the intention of designing safer machines and properly training technicians in their repair and upkeep. Though Henry was responsible for the education that happened there, William again was responsible for administration. Michael took on much of the educating responsibilities as soon as he was old enough, which freed more time for Henry to continue his work with his machines._

 _Then came another incident of group disappearances—five more children missing, the only clue being a single eyewitness testimony of a "purple guy" sneaking into the building. The security camera shows five more children following someone in a mascot suit, and none of them appeared again. A security guard was briefly considered a suspect, but only on loose, circumstantial evidence, and was released._

"Hm." Stan counted on his fingers again. "That's eleven."

Mr. Afton nodded. "There were other disappearances near our restaurants, but I don't imagine there were more than at any other individual location—after all, how many children go missing at the park, or in the mall? More eyes were trained on Freddy's, I suspect." A halfhearted laugh tumbled from his lips. "Similar anxieties and rumors have become prominent about Circus Baby's."

Stan could only make a displeased noise; he struggled to find anything to say.

"Michael must have been including the accidents," William murmured into his tea after a short pause. "That would make thirteen."

"Accidents?"

Mr. Afton's eyes dropped. "Yes. Henry's designs weren't…infallible…nor did they always account for the whims of children. There were defects…" His eyes drifted downward, fixating on his tea. When he spoke again, his voice sounded strained. "There were two occasions where children became too inquisitive with the animatronics. Each malfunctioned…neither survived."

There was near silence, but for Ford's pen scratching against the notebook. When the scratching stopped, Ford met Mr. Afton's look. "Is that what happened to your technician?"

"Something like that." He frowned. "Jeremy was inspecting the animatronics after one of the accidents, and Toy Foxy malfunctioned. He survived."

Ford's expression brightened. "Would we be able to talk to Jeremy?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Oh boy," Stan murmured into his drink.

"Why would that be?" Ford ventured, already dreading the answer. All things related to Freddy's seemed to end in tragedy.

"Jeremy hasn't quite recovered from his injuries." Mr. Afton sighed, adding quietly to himself, "I don't think he ever will."

Before Ford could ask, Stan nudged him. He instead offered an awkward, "I'm sorry to hear that."

Mr. Afton appeared not to hear.

William sat forward. "Is there anything else you'll need to know?" A grimace wriggled onto his face, chagrined. His eye twitched, as if he were physically pained, as he spoke again. "To…remove the spirits from the animatronics?"

"Perhaps…" To the untrained eye, it appeared that Ford was very seriously considering William's question, flipping through the notes he'd taken and synthesizing the information into a presentable format. Stan knew better. Ford had no poker face: his eyes were focused on the paper before him, but read nothing; his jaw clenched to prevent him from chewing the inside of his cheek; his fingers twitched, struggling with the conscious effort to stay still; his toes tapped in his shoes, visible only barely through his worn boots. "I'd like to see the other animatronics."

William made every effort not to look at his uncle. "Which ones?"

"The other possessed ones, of course." Ford glanced to the elder Afton. "I don't know what they would be or where they might be located…"

"Storage, I suspect." Mr. Afton folded his hands in his lap. His eyes drifted past his nephew. "Have Michael show them the warehouse." A wry smile fought to stay off his face. "Wouldn't want to release any other possessed animatronics into any of the other restaurants."

* * *

Michael wore an unsettling frown when the Pines twins arrived. He greeted them pleasantly, if not a bit stiffly, and led them into Circus Baby's Pizza World. Like the advertisement outside, the inside almost hurt to look at: its millions of bright, neon colors could only be identified and categorized by ravers on ecstasy; everything glistered with so much glitter that some of the employees needed sunglasses. Even Mabel may have considered the garish nightmare a bit much.

The atrium only hosted the prize counter and a wide hallway. Laughing and screaming children echoed from beyond the hall, barely drowning out competing calliope music. Stan could already feel the headache coming on. Michael led them beyond the glass case of cheap plastic novelties, through a door labeled "Employees Only".

A claustrophobic corridor brought them past an empty office, a break room hosting three teenage part-timers putting on their coats, a stock room with the loading door open to the back lot, and a storage closet. The last doors remained closed until Michael hit the call button. The elevator binged softly and the three entered the tight space.

Stan huffed a half-laugh. "Didn't figure this place for a warehouse."

"I'm not sure what the building used to be," Michael confessed. "Circus Baby's was a little before my time." The elevator descended with a jerk. "Mr. Henry wanted all maintenance to be done under his direct supervision, and all training needed to be done where the animatronics were…the underground facilities were built out shortly after my father and Mr. Henry bought it."

"Why do you need a warehouse facility for animatronics?" Ford asked. His hands, clasped behind his back, to economize space, couldn't grab for his pen and notebook.

"Mr. Henry's workshop couldn't house all of them."

The elevator binged again at the lower level, releasing them into a concrete corridor. This one, fortunately, had a high ceiling and more than enough space for them to walk side by side, though felt strangely empty with so few doors branching from it. Michael continued explaining before Ford needed to explicitly ask.

"He was always tinkering with them in his own workshop, making new designs." The wistful smile returned to his face, as it had when he encountered Freddy. "I spent most of my free time with him in that workshop. Some things just needed the help of small, nimble fingers." Michael rolled his fingers: they were long and thin, though calluses and oil stains removed any semblance of a pianist's grace. "I think he missed…"

For a few paces, Michael fell silent. The twins exchanged a questioning glance, silently deciding whether to prompt their guide. Ford mindlessly fiddled with his extra digits, unsure how to progress the conversation; if traveling with his brother had taught him anything, it was that human conversation remained an elusive art. At his brother's hesitation, Stan stuffed his hands deep within his pockets, hoping to withdraw a proper verbal transition.

"Why'd he make all those animatronics, anyway?" Stan shrugged. "I mean, I guess I'd get it if he were making the things for each restaurant."

Michael mimicked his motion. "He was always looking to improve their designs, make them safer, modernize their aesthetic, find ways to keep them exciting..." He glanced to the twins. "Mr. Henry was also insistent that each restaurant maintained its own identity, so the animatronics needed to be visually differentiated." As the group reached a locked door, Michael shook his head. "He had so many ideas, and many of them never came to fruition…"

"That's rough."

As he fished a key from his pocket, Michael made a dismissive noise. "It may be for the best. There were some bugs he never could quite iron out." He unlocked the door, though paused before opening it. "This is our general storage room. There are fully functional animatronics in here, as well as out of order and decommissioned models and some various parts. It's rather extensive."

A thought occurred audibly to Stan. "Hey, uh, Mike? How many robots are in there?"

"At the moment?" Michael considered his answer. "At least a few dozen."

Stan didn't need to communicate to his brother what problem they may encounter. Ford gestured beyond the door. "You wouldn't happen to know which ones were in a location where one of the 'incidents' occurred, would you?"

"Not with any certainty."

"Is there a way you could find out?" Ford persisted with a hint of urgency.

Michael frowned. "Perhaps…" He reached for a walkie-talkie in his back pocket. Clicking the button, he murmured into the receiver. "Does anyone know if Dave is here today?"

After a short pause, the speaker played some static. "Yes, Mr. Afton, he's here."

"I need him in storage."

More static. "On his way."

Michael slipped the walkie-talkie back into his pocket. "If anyone knows about them, it's Dave. He's worked for the Robotics Institute since it opened; father put him in charge of handling the malfunctioning animatronics." He shifted his weight to one foot. "Mr. Henry apparently couldn't bear to see them decommissioned."

Stan snorted, elbowing Ford playfully. "And I thought you were broken up about dealing with your, uh, 'project.'"

Ford punched his brother, though Stan noted that his ears had reddened. "There's nothing wrong with having a little pride in your work."

From the far end of the hall, the elevator binged again. A man exited, strolled toward them with no semblance of hurry, and slowed to a stop at the edge of the appropriate conversation distance. He initially said nothing, eyeing the Pines as though sizing them up.

"These gentlemen are helping father reopen Freddy's," Michael greeted by way of explanation. "They're handling the possessions. Would you happen to know which animatronics were at the location where the Purple Guy Disappearances happened?"

"The toy animatronics?" Dave asked. At Michael's affirmative nod, he rubbed at the back of his neck; the motion revealed a faded scar beneath his collar. "Uh, I can probably find them; they must be in there somewhere. I don't think they were ever scooped…"

"Excellent." Michael withdrew the keys from his pocket and handed them to Dave. He then turned back to the Pines twins, the forced smile back on his face. "Dave will be able to help you. He can answer most any question you might have about the machinery. If you need anything, call me or Billy. I'll be across the street at my father's house." Hardly registering if the twins responded, Michael disappeared into the elevator.

Dave pushed the door open, gesturing for them to enter. The storage room was divided into three sections: spare parts, a series of shelves holding boxes of metallic parts, plastic things, and soft materials; repairs storage, an open area of floor marked with tape, where about two dozen powered-down animatronics stood like soldiers; and the general storage, which was nothing more than rows of identical animatronics waiting for their time in the spotlight.

"A few dozen," Stan murmured, baffled, as he followed Dave to the general storage area. Ford murmured a similarly surprised sentiment; his sentence ended with an anticipatory upward inflection, where his brother's had been the dreadful opposite. In his excitement, the older twin darted forward until he evened with their guide, at which point he slowed considerably to match Dave's pace.

"According to Michael, there should be nine of these 'toy' animatronics," Ford happily informed. "Are there nine individual ones, or are there multiple of the same creature?"

Dave gave considerable pause before answering. "Well, um, there's only five." He didn't notice the slight slump in Ford's shoulders. "W-why would there be nine?"

"Michael and his father implied…"

As his brother fumbled for an explanation and recap of the past few days in Hurricane, Stan's attention wandered. Rows upon rows of anthropomorphic animals and synthetic simulacra watched them pass with unblinking eyes; more dust had settled on the machines the further they walked. With two nights in the haunted pizzeria under his belt, Stan had become accustomed to the plastic stares, though he found himself unsettled by the human-looking ones. Maybe because their design left them deep within the uncanny valley, maybe because he wasn't so intimately acquainted with them, or maybe it was that they seemed so much bigger than the others—not just taller, though that was certainly the case, but broader, meatier. Almost intimidating.

"Hey, Dave." Stan ignored the indignant sound his brother made at the interruption (for his part, Dave seemed completely unaffected). "What's with these ones?" He jabbed a thumb toward one with pigtails. "They're enormous! That one could probably take me in a fight."

Dave ran a hand through his mostly grey hair, resting it on the back of his neck as he constructed a response. Peeking out from beneath his cuff, Stan noticed a faded scar almost identical to the one on his neck. "Baby and Ballora were always meant to perform on stage, you know, in bigger rooms and higher up than Freddy and friends. So, they had to be made bigger to look like they're the same size." Dave paused beside the particular animatronic that Stan referenced: it stood nearly a foot and a half taller than him. Laughing, he knocked on its midsection. "Besides, Baby has a lot of extra machinery inside her. She can make ice cream, and she has an internal air compressor to fill up balloons—right at her fingertips!"

Though Ford's eyes lit up, Stan found himself far less entertained. "Then what's the story with these little gremlins?" He pointed to the horde of miniature humanoid animatronics behind Baby. Some seemed to be smaller versions of her, others seemed to be smaller versions of the dancer; none of them were more than three feet tall, generously measured. "Can't see them very well up on stage, though you'll probably see them in your nightmares for the rest of your life."

"The Bidybabs and Minireenas are kind of like the floor models of Baby and Ballora: they can play with the kids without being…uh, frightening."

"I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that one." Stan folded his arms. "How many 'incidents' these little law suits cause?"

"Oh, they're harmless. Couldn't kill you even if they wanted to." Smiling, Dave continued deeper into the storage room. Ford followed immediately, scribing the explanation before returning to whatever conversation Stan had interrupted.

"Yeah, that's not a suspicious thing to say." Stan's statement went unnoticed as he fell in line.

Near the far end of the room, they stopped. A group of decommissioned animatronics stood stock still against the wall. Like the schematics had shown, these plastic encased models were more streamlined, with a mod style aesthetic. Even the years of dust on them couldn't hide their brilliant playschool colors. Of all the machines they had encountered so far, these five looked the friendliest, including the creepy kid with the balloon.

Dave maneuvered a few of the animatronics out of the way with shocking ease. Perhaps the plastic models were lighter than their plush counterparts; Ford remembered the effort it had taken his brother to counteract their attacks, and Dave couldn't be younger than them. After hefting aside a few of the characters, their guide pulled forward five in particular.

"That was easy," Ford mused. Stan appeared to be far less enchanted as he looked over the characters.

"You get to know them pretty well after a while. They've all got pretty, uh, pretty distinct personalities," he said. "Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica—oh, yeah, uh, be careful with her, that beak tends to fall off—Balloon Boy, and Toy Foxy."

"Geez, I thought Toy Bonnie was the stuff of nightmares on paper." Shaking his head, Stan gestured to the robotic remains masquerading as Toy Foxy. "And what happened to that guy?"

"Yeah…these toy animatronics didn't really stay together very well." Dave chuckled awkwardly. "They tried to redesign Foxy to be more kid-friendly, and they put him in Kid's Cove at that location, you know, to keep the toddlers entertained. But kids these days just can't keep their hands to themselves—the staff literally had to put him back together after every shift. So eventually they stopped trying and left him as some sort of 'take apart and put back together' attraction. Now he's just a mess of parts…the employees used to call him 'the Mangle.'"

"That sounds safe."

"They can really be taken apart and put together like that, huh?" Curious, Ford kneeled down beside Mangle and inspected it.

"It's easier to teach the technicians, you know, and easier to reproduce the parts, to clean, to move around...And, you know, they're just a little less scary when you know you can throw 'em over your shoulder if you had to." He shifted. "Uh, not that you would have to."

"Nothing is going to make these things less scary," Stan decided flatly.

"They aren't so bad…"

Ford focused on the animatronics, Dave's awkward denial slowly drifting out of his active sensory perception. Something about their plastic casings and lighter frames felt feeble compared to the traditional, plush models—weaker, breakable. Less threatening, as the technician had said. Despite Mangle's second head and sharper teeth, it didn't induce the same primal fear reaction that the others did. What it did have, though, was the same hidden something beneath its glassy eyes, the indescribable, nigh imperceptible sense of life lurking in the machinery. He'd seen it more times than he'd care to admit, even in his own eyes: the look of a mind desynchronized from the physical body it inhabited. As he'd anticipated, Mangle was possessed by something else. Something, he dared to venture, that would prompt it to move come midnight.

"…and, uh, you know, their optical scanners weren't as great as the management thought they were. They definitely made more than their fair share of mistakes—misidentifying people, mostly, and, of course, we had to do thorough examinations for each database hit we got—it was a total nightmare. I-I'm glad they dropped these models as main restaurant characters. I think they're better for rental parties, anyway…"

Ford pushed himself to his feet, quickly investigating the other toy animatronics. Their hazy plastic eyes showed the same something simmering beneath the surface. That brought the confirmed number of hauntings to nine. Where were the other four?

"Dave?"

The technician stopped mid-sentence at Ford's call. "Yes?"

"You wouldn't happen to know about the two, ah, accidents, would you?" Ford folded his hands behind his back. "Or which animatronics might be the culprits?"

"Uh…" Eyes shifting, Dave ran a hand through his hair. "You mean Charlie and Sammy's accidents, right?"

"Sure," Stan supplied before Ford could indicate otherwise.

"Well, uh…I'm not really sure how you know about them, with Mr. Cawthon being dead and Mr. Afton avoiding the topic in general…but, uh…" Reaching into the depths of his memory, Dave considered the room of potential suspects. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, folded his arms, and eventually frowned. "I'm not sure what happened to Fredbear, actually. Last I heard, he was in Mr. Cawthon's workshop—he really loved that one, you know, it was his first creation, and after what happened with Sammy, I don't—I don't think he was ever ready to see it disassembled. But it's not like he could keep it here, where Mr. Afton and Mikey and Billy would have to see it all the time, so he just brought it home with him. I'm not sure what happened to Fredbear after Mr. Cawthon died, though. Mr. Afton, you know, was the one that went through all his things…"

"You don't think Mr. Afton would have destroyed it, do you?" Ford's question sounded unsure, though not hopeful.

"I don't know." Dave scratched his head. "As for Baby…uh, well…I don't know if Mr. Henry ever specified which model it was that got Charlie…uh…but, y'know, probably, I think it's most likely the first one. She's upstairs, actually, on stage."

"Is she?" The hope returned to Ford's voice. "Could we see her?"

Dave checked his watch. "The pizzeria isn't closed yet, but I think the Circus Gallery is closed for the night. The technicians won't be there, yet, either, so, you know, this is probably the best time."

After Dave returned the toy animatronics to their proper locations, the group returned to the restaurant's main level. Dozens of children, hyped up on sugar and pizza, ran through the corridor, screaming and chasing each other between the galleries. At the far end of the hall, a pair of locked doors waited as the three weaved through the frolicking kids. Dave unlocked the room to let them enter.

The Circus Gallery was a wide room, empty at the moment as the tables and chairs had been moved aside for easier cleanup. A teenager ran a vacuum across the thin carpeting in front of the stage, removing the day's glitter and dirt. The curtain, drawn across the elevated platform, swayed with the part timer's movements. Dave raised his voice to ensure the boy heard him.

"Eggs!"

The teen glanced up, eyes so dull he may as well have been one of the animatronics. "Yeah, Dave?"

"Could you, uh—could you shut that thing off so I don't have to shout?" When the boy complied, Dave continued, "Could you go help clean the kitchen?"

Eggs eyed the Pines twins with suspicion, shrugged, and propped the vacuum against the stage. He left the gallery with no words, though his lingering look certainly wondered what the management could possibly be doing now.

"Did you call that kid 'Eggs'?" Stan asked. "That can't possibly be his name."

"Oh, uh, no, his name is John. The other employees call him Eggs Benedict for some reason—some kinda reference in a video game or something, I think." Dave walked to the side of the stage and ascended a set of hidden stairs, Ford half a pace behind him. The technician's voice floated across the room, though his words were mostly obscured by the heavy curtain.

Stan chose not to follow; his brother could figure out if the seven-foot humanoid monstrosity was possessed without his help. Taking a break from Dave's incessant chatter certainly proved too tempting for him to pass up. It was like listening to that Phone Guy without the stop button. Instead, Stan decided to survey the room.

Other than the vibrant colors and excessive glitter, there wasn't anything noteworthy about the gallery. Still, something felt off. He had the same uneasiness when touring the other pizzeria. Yeah, sure, the place gave him the heebie-jeebies, like a lot of Ford's anomalies, but whatever was wrong here didn't feel…spooky. After pacing the empty room a few times, he realized that the issue was spatial: it felt like the walls were too close, that it should have been bigger based on the architecture outside. Not that he could chart the math to prove himself right. He could, however, check the walls himself. If he could tunnel his way out of a Colombian prison, he could figure out if a pizzeria hid some sort of secret room behind the thin drywall.

He didn't have trouble finding a suspicious passageway: an air duct large enough to fit a person. Large enough to fit an adult person. Stan ducked down beside it, prodding at the grating. It was loose. Intrigued, he pulled at it; the metal moved away with ease. He stole a glance at the stage—Dave still rambled at Ford from behind the drawn curtain—and investigated the passageway again. Why was there an enormous, movie-style air duct here? What possible purpose could it serve?

Stan frowned. There was something more than possessed robots and bad business practices in Hurricane—whatever that "something" was, it was what was abducting and killing children. He fished around his pocket, producing his harmonica, and placed it against the wall. Carefully, he moved the grating aside and slid into the air duct.


	9. Night Three (Ford)

For a man whose brother had just disappeared in an unfamiliar location heavily associated with glitter and suspected murder, Ford appeared completely nonplussed. Maybe a bit annoyed, his brow knit and his lip slightly downturned, but, on the whole, he couldn't be less interested as Dave frantically paced in the restaurant's atrium and panicked into the phone.

"I don't know—he was with us one moment, a-and then he disappeared!"

Ford continued scrawling in his notebook, postulating theories and assembling a plan. Every time his pen paused, he reached for a brass object in his coat, one wholly useless in his hands and foreign to his possession. The harmonica was a comforting weight in his pocket, its smooth surface soothing as a security blanket. Initially, like Dave, Ford had panicked at Stan's mysterious absence; the instrument, found on the floor and surreptitiously slipped out of sight, immediately told him that his brother had ghosted of his own volition. What, precisely, he had planned, remained a mystery, and kept him uneasy. At least he could be reasonably certain that Stan wasn't dead.

"No, no one's seen him."

Beside him, Eggs huffed. He had the ill luck of being the last employee in the building when Stan vanished; when Dave locked the doors, he insisted that no one could leave until there was some sort of definitive answer to the disappearance. The teen made his frustration apparent with his rapid texting and unapologetic side eye every time Ford paused his writing. Whenever Ford made eye contact, Eggs scowled and engrossed himself in his phone.

"It's only Eggs and me, yes."

The teen perked up at his moniker, pausing his quick fingers to eavesdrop.

"No, he hasn't had any night shift training, so I'd rather, uh…I'd recommend not…" Dave sighed. "And, you know, he's already put in too many hours this week—I should, uh, I should send him home, right? We did search the building…uh…no…"

Eggs glowered at the continually diminishing opportunity to leave. "This is ridiculous," he grumbled. "Whenever we lose a kid, Dave always lets us leave. Don't know why he doesn't think an old dude can't take care of himself." On noticing Ford listening, he awkwardly added, "Uh, no offense."

Ford waved off the comment. "Do children disappear here often?"

"I mean, 'disappear' is kind of intense. It's a building full of unsupervised little kids hopped up on sugar—it's not weird for them to get lost or whatever." He shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Dave and Mike usually don't make us stay to look for them. I mean, I guess Bill does, but he's not really here a lot. And it's not even like Dave is making me do anything useful anymore, anyway. Just paying me now to stand here."

"They don't have you look for the missing children?"

"That's what I'm saying. Weird, right?" Again, Eggs huffed. "I guess the rumors have to start somehow."

"Interesting."

Dave's sudden yelp startled them both.

"Eggs!"

The teen jerked his head up at the call, hope returning to his expression.

Dave ushered him to the front door. "C'mon, Mr. Afton says you're good to go. I'll clock you out, don't worry about it. Just, uh, head home and, uh, you know, don't, uh, mention any of this to any sort of media or insurance representatives."

Eggs barely managed to babble out some incoherent agreement before darting out of the door, lest his boss change his mind and make him stay. When the teen had disappeared into the frosty parking lot, Dave returned his attention to Ford.

"Mr. Afton thought that, you know, the less people involved, uh, the better." Dave ran a hand through his hair. "He said he'd be here, uh, as soon as possible to, you know, help out."

Ford offered a weak smile. "I'm sorry. My brother has a knack for trouble. I wish I could tell you where he went."

"I-I wish I could do the same." Dave's eyes shifted. "I can't imagine, you know, where he could be. Your-your car is still here, he wasn't in any of the rooms…uh…none of the rooms he could have gotten into, anyway…"

A frown wormed its way onto Ford's face. _That one could probably take me in a fight_. Of course, he had the utmost faith in his brother to take care of himself, more or less—where he may not have necessarily been learned or skilled, he was inventive and tenacious. But Stan had a knack for finding himself in precarious situations, whether through his own designs or someone else's. Ford stuffed his hand into his pocket, carefully tracing the edges of the harmonica.

"There are some, uh, areas of the pizzeria that he might be in," Dave continued as though Ford had actually responded. "I, uh, I don't know how he could have gotten into any of them or, uh, how he would get out. Most employees aren't even allowed in them, you know, so I can't bring you with me to check, and I can't leave you unattended…"

* * *

When Michael arrived, he appeared more panicked than Dave; he may well have run to the pizzeria for how heavily he breathed. He held his hand out, asking for something, as he regained control of his respiration. Dave obliged by returning the key.

"How did you manage to lose him?" he asked. "We don't even lose _children_ here—how did you displace an entire adult human being?"

"I don't know!" Dave wrung his hands, anxious. "I don't know where he could be—I locked the doors, and he was with us in Circus Gallery…"

Admittedly, Ford found himself too amused. It was his brother that was missing, and yet he was the only person in the room not moments away from a horrific mental breakdown; in fact, he was quite calm. He felt confident that Stan would appear at any moment, perhaps a bit ruffled but generally not worse for the wear, with that toothy grin and an elegantly simple (and completely false) explanation for his absence. He didn't let the fact that Stan had been missing for hours weigh too heavily on his mind.

"I'll check the storage room," Michael said, resolute. "Dave, wait here with Stanford—"

"I'd rather accompany you, Michael, if that's not a problem." Ford snapped his book shut and slid it into his coat pocket. "I would feel, um, more assured for my brother's safety if I were aiding the search."

Michael motioned to deny the request, thought about it for a moment longer, and changed his mind. "I suppose it's better for you to be where you can be monitored…"

Silently relieved, Ford followed Michael into the "employees only" area; Dave lagged behind them, conspicuously speechless. Their footsteps echoed sharply off the hall's linoleum floor, impatient and exaggerated in the eerie silence. The elevator clanged its way to their floor when called. Its metallic noises rang louder and more disconcertingly as the three descended deep underground. When they finally reached the bottom, Michael led them through the concrete corridor, directly to the storage room.

"Best to check here before they wake." Michael shoved the key into the lock, missing Ford's surprised sound.

"Not that that, uh, would be a problem," Dave quickly cut in. "They're not dangerous or anything…except, you know, the whole 'thinking you're an endoskeleton and stuffing you into a suit' thing."

"No, I suppose that's not much of a problem." Ford could perfectly imagine Stan's reaction: the incredulous pique of his brother's brow, the half-slack of his jaw, the shift of his eyes as he searched for confirmation that he'd heard correctly. A twinge of anxiety cut through his ironic amusement, though it was sated when he reached for the harmonica in his pocket. After all, Stan wouldn't have left behind a token if he were in any sort of real danger.

The storage room, too, was quiet, absent of typical ambient noises—the hum of an air conditioner or the din of static electronics. Even their breathing and footsteps seemed unnaturally dull. Plastic eyes followed them down the aisles, unwelcoming of their presence. Ford had become accustomed to the persistence of innumerable eyes watching him ( _"I can see lots of things, I.Q., lots of things…"_ ), but none of the eyes minded him. For once, _he_ wasn't the one being monitored; if anything, the synthetic, unblinking eyes exclusively followed Dave, who keenly avoided meeting any of the stares.

"You, uh, you don't really think Stan could be in here, do you?" Dave's awkward laugh broke the insistent silence. "I-I was sure to lock the doors when we left."

Michael halted at the end of a row. He glanced at the Funtime Foxy standing beside him, frowned, and turned to his employee. "Dave, is Funtime Foxy still upstairs?"

"No, uh, the staff brought him here for the tomorrow's, uh, class. Should be him right there."

As when the other Aftons spoke, the sudden lightness in Michael's voice indicated nothing good. Tense, Ford investigated the animatronic. He didn't need twelve P.h.D.s to see what had startled Michael: Foxy's usually pristine white teeth dripped with blood—not a lethal amount, but enough to pool worryingly at their feet.

"Not again…"

Ford swallowed hard. The musical weight in his pocket no longer placated his anxiety.


	10. Night Three (Stan)

Admittedly, Stan had slightly misjudged the size of the vents; the tight fit didn't allow him to move with any great quickness, but he could maneuver with relative ease (he even somehow managed to replace the grate at the entrance). Claustrophobia knotted in his chest as he descended through the dark space. Each motion resonated in his ears with a metallic clang that he was amazed no one heard. He didn't travel a long distance until he found the exit.

It would have been generous to call the place he entered a room. Had he somehow managed to sneak Ford through the vent with him, the two of them wouldn't have been able to fit in the room at the same time. Most of the space held a large console, covered in buttons and levers and dials; two especially large buttons—one with a light and one with a lightning bolt—waited impatiently by his hand. As there appeared to be no proper lighting in the room, he assumed that the buttons activated something in the gallery, which he could see through the window in front of him. Other than the couple of creepy dolls placed about, there didn't seem to be anything else in here.

" _I don't recognize you._ "

Stan jerked at the voice, smashing his elbow into the wall. He was alone—he was sure of it—even if he weren't, there was nowhere for anyone else to be, not in this room.

" _You are new._ "

The staccato feminine voice reverberated from somewhere near his feet. He dropped to the floor, examined the wall, and found another vent, the same size as the other one, though this one had no grate.

" _I remember this…scenario…_ "

Her voice definitely originated somewhere further in the darkness. Stan cursed himself for not bringing a light (Ford's pen light more than sufficed their needs so far), scowled, and crawled toward the voice. This couldn't end well, he knew that much, but he'd already gone this far. Aside, he could probably take any of the animatronics in this place in a fight; the ones he couldn't, hopefully, were too big to fit into the vents.

The tunnel was longer than the first. Far longer. He followed the distant light, silent but for the thuds of his limbs against the metal around him. Again, he found himself disbelieving that nobody in the restaurant could hear him thundering through the vents. He made progress slowly, unsuccessfully minimizing the noise he made, steadily moving forward in spite of the claustrophobia's increasing presence.

Eventually, he reached the exit, finding himself in another industrial observation room. This one was larger, at least, with two glass panels on opposite walls, each showing different galleries, both dark. There was no sign of whatever had called to him through the vent.

" _You're not like the others._ "

Her voice originated in the room, nearby, despite the absence of animatronics in the room. He couldn't find any speakers, either, as he searched the room: only unidentifiable buttons, levers, and panels, and two more open passages. This children's pizzeria had an unreasonably elaborate and human-sized ventilation system.

" _What is it that you're looking for? Maybe answers...Maybe…something else…_ "

Stan frowned, recognizing the warmth of a siren song. Forty years of conning people, even if he couldn't remember most of it, taught him when people wanted something from him. This animatronic was no exception.

" _The Funtime Gallery is clear, now; all of the employees have finished their work for the evening. You will not be bothered, unless Funtime Foxy mistakes you for another. Do not use a light. It will draw his attention. There will be a door to your left. They do not know that it is unlocked, and they will not know to look for you there._ "

Everything said in this establishment sounded like a death sentence. Stan glanced at the two vents, weighing his options. On a whim, he chose the one on the left, clambering back onto his hands and knees to fit through the passageway.

Like the last one, this vent went on for ages. How long he crawled, he didn't know; after only a few paces, he became submerged in total darkness. He didn't remember being so unsettled by the dark or tight spaces, but his body untensed noticeably when he emerged into the gallery. It, too, was completely black. Cautiously, he stepped forward.

Nothing immediately attacked him as he moved into the room. Nothing attacked him as he moved further, though he did manage to smack his knee into every table. At some point, he must have passed by all the tables and chairs; he found himself in an open space. Stan sincerely hoped that he hadn't lost his sense of direction and headed left. A vibration in his pocket halted him only a few steps later.

He waited for a few moments for his heart to stop thumping in his throat. His hand habitually went for the phone, freezing as soon as he touched it. He couldn't answer it—he would certainly be heard if he did that—but what if it was Ford? What if he hadn't found the harmonica and was panicking over his missing brother? He could brush him off, explain it away later. Ford could handle a little anxiety. But what if it were the kids? Dipper could take a hint, assume that his grunkles were too busy monster hunting to pick up the phone, but Mabel…she would keep calling until he answered, excited about whatever news she had or worried for their safety. If he sent her a message, she'd know he wasn't ignoring her. He needed to check.

Hesitantly, he withdrew the vibrating device from his pocket. Mabel—?

Heavy footsteps clomped behind him. Stan glanced over his shoulder, finding a white and pink monstrosity standing there. He had just enough time to twist aside to avoid the bite to his shoulder; he wasn't able to prevent the thing's teeth from sinking into his right forearm.

He kicked the animatronic hard enough to knock it back. Unfortunately, the animatronic persisted. Stan was not quick enough to avoid the second attack.

* * *

Stan remembered this scenario from a long time ago. Details came back to him, piecemeal, building the memory into something coherent. He remembered the darkness first, a total shutout of all light, as if his eyes had never known how to see. Next came the oppressively close walls, the feeling of being locked in a too-small space against his will, with no knowledge of who put him there or why. Then, the struggle to move, his limbs bound by some unidentifiable something, keeping him uncomfortably fast. Sounds were the last thing to return: in his hazy period, there was a distant Spanish conversation, the continuous hum of a motor and wind rushing outside, the rumbling of tires against the road; now, he heard the distant din of an air conditioner, the blood pumping in his ears, his own compressed breathing.

His emotions returned next. Panic made his heart race, exhaustion made his body heavy and unresponsive, fear made his thoughts erratic. He missed his brother. Simmering underneath it all was a factual acceptance of his demise. He was calmer now than he had been in his memories, though not nearly as prepared for death.

It may have been New Mexico, or Arizona, or Texas, or maybe somewhere in Central or South America; wherever it was, it was hot, and he owed a lot of money. He'd had his warnings, but he didn't get out of town fast enough. If he hadn't been sleeping, maybe they wouldn't have caught him. But they did—bound him and gagged him and threw him in the trunk of their car, bringing him somewhere the law couldn't find them. ( _"¿Ya vive?" "¿Es importante?" "Si no necesita perdir otro carro, prefiero que no." "Es lo que Rico quiso."_ ) When the car finally stopped, they abandoned it—and him—to the wilderness beyond the end of the road. He was alone, struggling against his bindings for what could have been hours and only succeeding at freeing his mouth.

Ford once spent an afternoon explaining the makeup and strength of human teeth in an attempt to persuade him to be more careful in his boxing bouts. The facts, completely insignificant to Stan at the time, trickled through his thoughts as he tried to construct an escape plan. Ideas faltered, fading away for one reason or another, until only those facts remained. If his teeth were so durable, then surely…

His jaw had never been so sore, nor would it ever be again. For the amount of blood dripping from his mouth, he had expected to lose more teeth. But he had survived.

" _Shh. Be still and quiet._ "

Stan immediately hated the animatronic's voice.

" _You've been sleeping for quite a while. I think they noticed that you never left the building last night._ "

Last night? How long had he been unconscious?

" _They have been searching for you. But they couldn't find you. I have you hidden too well. I kidnapped you. Don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you. I am only going to keep you for a little while._ "

Of the things that he expected to happen to him, Stan had to admit, abduction by possessed robot in a children's pizzeria was not one of them. He shifted slightly to gauge the amount of space he had to work with; it wasn't much.

" _Try not to wiggle, though. You're inside something that came from my old pizzeria. I don't think it was ever used—at least, not the way it was ever meant to be used. Too dangerous. It's just big enough for one person to fit inside. But just barely._ "

That sort of answered his question. What it didn't address was the uncomfortable pressure he felt on each joint or the suspicious lack of feeling in his right arm. He tried to wiggle his fingers; he couldn't feel enough to tell if he had moved them or not.

" _There's something very important that I've learned how to do over time. That is: how to pretend. Do you ever play make-believe? Pretend to be one way, when you are really the other? It's very important. The others never learn. But I do._ "

For all the talking it had done at him, Stan had yet to see the animatronic. He wouldn't be able to see it now, either, even if it were standing right in front of him. It could at least give him a more immediate idea of where he'd been stowed, if it was going to talk at him anyway.

" _They think there is something wrong on the inside. The only thing that matters is knowing how to pretend._ "

Pretend? Pretending to what? He had the sneaking suspicion that it was pretending to help, which, he mused, would likely lead him to his death—likely the result the animatronic wanted. Regardless of his disembodied company, he had to escape. What could he do but struggle?

" _I'll open the face plates for you. That way, they can find you._ "

Something clicked inches from his face. A bit of light seeped in through a crack, barely enough for his eyes to become useful to him. Two metal plates separated, two halves of a face peeling off a skull, letting him see some of the room: a large conveyor belt seemed to lead him and a couple other lifeless animatronics into a dark void. Somewhere overhead a single floodlight illuminated the room, casting dark shadows against the walls.

" _Now, all you have to do is wait. I'd recommend that you keep an eye on those spring locks. Your breathing and your heartbeat are causing them to come loose. You don't want them to get too loose. Trust me._ "

Never trust anyone or anything that has to ask for your trust—that was the first thing he learned on the road and the first thing he remembered without his brother's meticulous and incessant prompting. But the spring locks…he'd heard enough from Phone Guy about those things. They must be what pinched at his joints. He thought he could feel the one at his left shoulder shuddering, as if to illustrate the urgency of keeping them tight.

Unfortunately, Stan wasn't one to wait for things to happen. There had to be a way out of this suit. After all, it had been designed to be put on and taken off by part-time high school kids. Couldn't be that hard.

He wriggled his left hand in the small space; the spring lock there shifted worryingly in response. The same went for his feet. His right hand, having regained some of its normal sensation, seemed to have more freedom, readily slipping from its containment with the slightest effort. As soon as his hand vacated the space, the spring lock snapped shut. Stan took a moment to calm his breathing; the ripple of shuddering the first lock sent through the suit unnerved him more than he cared to admit.

Removing the rest of his arm was precarious. Now that he focused on it, his arm hurt and didn't want to do as he commanded. The spring locks resting against it rattled audibly, so close to snapping. Why were they so much looser than the others—?

The blood. Of course—Phone Guy said the spring locks all but broke in the presence of liquids—he'd been bleeding on the damn thing this whole time—no wonder his hand had slipped out with so little trouble. He felt his heart beat faster, panic setting in. If he couldn't free his arm… _Bone and all_.

Slowly, cautiously, he pulled his arm upward, inch by inch, trying desperately not to agitate the spring lock. At least two full minutes passed as he gingerly maneuvered his arm (a task which, despite its importance, his injured appendage continued to fight against). He was surprised when his arm suddenly slid out of its holding. In the dim lighting, it looked like he'd been mauled; he would have to handle it later. First, he needed to get out of this death trap.

Having one hand free, even if it weren't as cooperative as he'd like, helped immensely. He managed to release his left arm without tripping any of the locks, struggle out of the main body of the suit, and shuck the mask. It must have taken an hour for him to strip off the entire costume.

Stan slumped against the wall. Once he got his breathing under control, he examined his injury in the low light. It no longer bled, which he supposed was good, but it wasn't pretty. At least Foxy had wrecked his jacket, so he didn't feel bad ripping it apart for bandage material.

His arm properly secured, Stan pushed himself to his feet. As he hadn't died, he supposed he needed to continue his investigation. He looked around the room for an exit. There was a single door, which he guaranteed was locked and which would only lead back into the pizzeria. There was also a suspicious floor panel, a smooth metal plate that appeared bolted to the floor. He nudged at a bolt with his foot; as expected, it shifted. He kneeled beside it, silently cursing his old knees, and pulled the panel up to reveal a passageway.

"Of course," he grumbled. Once inside, he replaced the metal plate. Something important had to be at the end of this tunnel; no one built an underground labyrinth unless they had big secrets to hide.


	11. Not Panicking

Ford paced across the gallery, passing the spot where they'd found his brother's phone in a pool of blood; somewhere behind him, Michael and Dave deliberated what to do about his missing brother in hushed whispers. Of course, they were worried for no reason. Stan could take care of himself. Even if he were injured—not that he would have gotten injured. Whatever he was up to, Ford was sure, Stan was perfectly fine.

His footsteps quickened, his grip tightening on the bloodstained phone. Surely, Stan would reappear soon, unharmed, with some zany anecdote. He'd done the same sort of thing hundreds of times as a child, causing all sorts of mischief; there wasn't anything to worry about. No reason to fret. Not at all.

His heart jumped when his cell phone rang. After evening his breathing, Ford checked the screen. Mabel. He found himself answering the video chat before registering the inappropriate timing.

"Um, hi Mabel."

" _Hi Grunkle Ford!_ " On the other side of the screen, Mabel flailed. She seemed to notice something in the background and put her face close to the camera to investigate. " _It's so dark. Where are you guys?_ "

Ford glanced aside. "Oh, uh, we're just investigating an anomaly. In the dark. Where weird things are, being weird and all that."

" _Oh, that's cool._ " She backed away from the camera, allowing Ford a better look at the colorful, glittery side of the twins' bedroom. It did look eerily similar to the pizzeria. " _Anyway, is Grunkle Stan there? I need his help with a…secret project…_ "

"Secret project?"

" _It's a secret, Grunkle Ford, I can't tell you._ " Grinning conspiratorially, she tried to peer over Ford's shoulders into the darkness. " _Grunkle Stan? Grunkle Stan! GRUNKLE STAN-!_ "

" _Mabel!_ " Dipper's voice floated in from behind his sister, stopping her shouts. " _Grunkle Stan is probably busy hunting some kind of creature._ "

" _But Dipper! I need his lock picking expertise to break into the zoo—it's super important!_ "

Dipper appeared over his sister's shoulder. " _Don't mind her, Grunkle Ford, she's working on some 'secret business' for the knitting club. You know how she gets all worked up over that sort of thing._ "

A borderline hysterical laugh tore from Ford's throat. "Y-yes, Mabel does tend to get excited about those sorts of things."

" _Are you okay? You kinda look worried about something._ "

"Me? I'm fine—everything's perfect—all according to plan. I have everything under control, nothing to worry about here." Ford's voice rose to an unnaturally high pitch. "There is nothing here I can't handle. I have absolutely everything under control."

The twins exchanged an unsettled glance. " _Are you sure?_ "

"Absolutely! What could I possibly not handle in this situation?" Ford wiped a small spatter of blood from the phone's screen. "There's nothing to worry about."

Mabel frowned. " _You're acting kind of jumpy and junk._ "

"I'm not acting suspicious. Who's acting suspicious? I'm certainly not. N-nothing of the sort! I'm fine—everything's fine."

As Mabel had earlier, Dipper tried to look past Ford into the restaurant. " _Um…Is there someone there who can be more convincing that everything is okay? Is Grunkle Stan there?_ "

"Stanley?" Ford actively avoided meeting the kids' eyes. He had always been a terrible liar; his current distressed mental state only made his mouth run uncontrollably. "He's fine—perfectly okay. Definitely not missing. Who said he was missing? Because he's not. He wasn't attacked by some kind of possessed animatronic, if that's what you're thinking. I most certainly didn't lose track of him last night and fail to find him yet. Why would you ever think such a thing?"

" _What?_ "

"I'll call you later, kids, study hard, don't be late for school again."

" _But it's Saturday—_ "

Ford clicked to end the call, then slid the phone into his pocket. He ran a hand through his hair, collecting himself, when he became aware of Michael's and Dave's stares. Clearing his throat, he clasped his hands behind his back and turned to his undesired audience.

"Well, Michael, Dave? Have we reached any conclusions concerning the whereabouts of my brother?" He frowned. "I think I've been more than patient on the matter thus far."

"Yes, and we greatly appreciate your patience." Michael matched his frown. "Unfortunately, there is nowhere your brother could be on the premises." Before Ford could contradict him, Michael continued, "He must have left the restaurant at some point."

"Is there some way we could find out? Some security footage, perhaps?" With a derisive snort, Ford rolled his eyes. "It's not as if we could ask if any employees saw him, as they were all sent home."

Michael folded his arms, considering. "The security cameras may have caught him—"

"There are actually security cameras? Why the devil didn't we check them earlier?" Scowling, Ford violently gestured toward the lower level. "Perhaps we ought to do the obvious before drawing any conclusions about my brother's whereabouts."

* * *

The elevator binged again at the bottom floor. Michael exited first, Ford storming half a pace behind him. Dave walked distantly behind the two of them, keeping his commentary to himself. Their destination was an office, the first door on the right. It was a small room, immediately crowded once Ford entered, with more than a dozen monitors fixated around the restaurant. Most of the screens were black.

"I last saw Stanley in the Circus Gallery, around nine o'clock last night," Ford told Michael as he looked among the monitors. He hoped the camera for that room wasn't one of the ones showing no feed.

Michael kneeled to glance among the tapes stowed below the console, pausing when he fully registered the sentence. "Dave didn't call me until well after eleven."

"I may have gotten carried away studying the animatronics." Avoiding Michael's incredulous stare, Ford adjusted his glasses.

"I see." Apparently, Michael had no intention of asking Dave to explain any further. He made a frustrated noise as he rummaged through the tapes. "Typical."

"Typical?" Exasperation seeped into Ford's voice. He made a sweeping motion with his arm. "What's the issue? The tape should be there—it was only a few hours ago!"

Michael held up an unlabeled tape. "The last month's security footage has been wantonly stacked here, unlabeled. I'll have to have a talk with the night crew…" A groan rumbled in his throat. "We'll have to go through them individually—"

"You must be joking."

"But that I were." Michael stuffed the tape in his hand into the VCR embedded in the console; one of the monitors sprung to life, displaying a workshop. Ford recognized much of the work as partially-constructed animatronics. Almost immediately, Michael removed the VHS. "This will take some time…"

Ford snorted. "Quite the understatement." He glanced at his watch; it was nearly seven in the morning.

"You may want to settle in." Sighing, Michael popped another tape into the VCR.

One tape showed the parking lot from two weeks ago; the next, the atrium from the year prior. The one after that was also the atrium, from last week, and the following one was from the kitchen a few days before. Michael moved methodically, inserting and removing the VHSs one by one, slowly working through the intimidating stack, too fixated on his task to speak. For his part, Ford had no questions that hadn't already been asked, silently watching as the screen cut between static and old footage.

His patience wore thin quickly. Stan was _somewhere_ , lost, alone, injured—he had already squandered the entire night, trusting that his brother had sound judgement, and now his trail had been lost. Ford cursed himself. There must be something he could do to make up for lost time. He couldn't stand there, useless.

Ready to demand that Dave escort him about the premises again, Ford turned to the open door. His complaint died on his tongue, as there was no one there to verbally assault—the technician was gone. Flabbergasted, Ford returned his attention to Michael; the younger man continued to shift tapes in a consistent rhythm, such that he appeared to have worked himself into a daze. Ford made to inform Michael of the second disappearance, but changed his mind. Instead, he stepped back, moving silently, and slipped into the corridor unnoticed.

Sure enough, he didn't see Dave in the hallway, either. Ford hurried along, trying each door as he passed, hoping to find one unlocked. The sixth knob he tried happened to turn under his grasp. Hoping it may lead somewhere useful, he slid into the room and closed himself inside.

A single floodlight lit the room. Before him was a large machine, fed by a conveyor belt along one wall; the whole apparatus mostly hid an observation area angled to see the inner workings of the machine. Animatronics rested on the motionless conveyor belt, all lifeless due to the hour. One of them had been partially disassembled, revealing a network of metal guts, sprung traps, and cavities large enough to hold a person. A small pool of dark, viscous liquid settled beneath one of its arms.

Ford darted to the unfamiliar animatronic. Blood aside, there was little to work with. Stan had clearly been here, but there was no indication of when, for how long, at what point his brother had escaped, or where he had gone. Frantic, he searched the nearby area—stray blood droplets must have splattered somewhere to provide him a clue. A few splotches of blood stained the wall just beside the humanoid simulacrum, but seemed not to have spread elsewhere.

It made no sense: Stan had to have gone somewhere. At some point, his brother must have tended to his wound, ending the blood trail; he'd have to search on his own. Ford paced the room, inspecting the machine, the conveyor belt, the synthetic creatures, the area beyond the observation window, the ceiling, and the blank walls. Nothing yielded a solution, only eliminating possibilities. When finally he thought to investigate the floors he'd traversed half a dozen times, he found a discolored floor panel.

Instantly, he dropped to his hands and knees. The panel appeared to be bolted down, but the faint bloody handprint indicated that it was more. Gently, he nudged the metal plate aside. This is where his brother had gone, he had no doubt. Ford dropped into the dark passageway, only hesitating to replace the panel. At least he had a pen light to guide him.


	12. Night Four (Stan)

It was dark.

Stan felt incredibly stupid for the thought, but there wasn't much else to think about. His senses were starved, what little they could pick up having become so monotonous that he may as well not been receiving any input whatsoever. Of course, he saw nothing. His hand, which served as his only guide in the eternal darkness, only dully registered the feeling of clay dirt, simply acknowledging that the tunnel walls were still there. His muffled footsteps padded along the ground in an even pattern, constant from the moment he entered the blackness.

How long he'd walked, he had no idea. Minutes, hours, it all felt the same in the indecipherable environment. All he knew was the tunnel stretched forward and there was no light at the end. At least the passageway, unlike the vents, was spacious; he vaguely remembered the halls of Glass Shard Beach High School—oddly wide and too high, but still somehow suffocating.

When he finally began to question his decision, he slammed into a wall; Stan was too grateful to finally find the end of the tunnel to be mad about it. He felt around for some way out, shortly encountering a ladder.

Stan climbed a few rungs before reaching the ceiling. Gingerly, he pushed upward, chancing to move a panel.

His eyes took a few moments to adjust to the light in the room, dim as it was. A single fluorescent bulb burned overhead, the only one of three that hadn't burned out, humming in a pitch that didn't agree with his hearing aid. Shelves lined one wall, holding some mechanical parts and tools, pieces of animatronics that littered every room the public didn't see. In the middle of the room was a table, stained dark, but otherwise clean and clear. Against the far wall slumped two boneless mascot suits. Both were gold, only distinguishable by a slight variation in shade: one had steeped in whatever rusty liquid had pooled beneath it.

For the moment, Stan ignored them. He walked to the door; it had been sealed up eons ago ( _"…the previously mentioned safe rooms are being sealed at most locations…")._ His hand slid across the place where a knob once was. There didn't seem to be any sort of secret lever or obvious trick to open it. Apparently, this room was the end of the line. If he was going to find anything, it would be in here.

He moved to the shelves, again avoiding the old blood ( _"After learning of an unfortunate incident at the sister location, involving multiple and simultaneous spring lock failures, the company has deemed the suits temporarily unfit for employees."_ ). The absence of dust—anywhere—was striking. Pieces of what might be a metal arm, a couple of flathead screwdrivers, a handful of washers, and a pinwheel sat at eye level. Amidst the mechanical pieces and police grade flashlight, on the shelf below, there was a plastic whistle. A few metal tokens littered the floor at his feet. He had a guess about the dark stains strewn about the room.

Clenching his jaw, he grabbed a flashlight. The weight gave him a measure of comfort. He clicked it on, sweeping the room one last time. Satisfied that there was nothing more than a few tokens and a lot of blood, he returned to the subterranean tunnel. At least he had a light this time; instead of marveling at how dark it was, he could spend his trek figuring out the story he'd give his brother about his injured arm.


	13. Night Four (Ford)

Ford had once spent what turned out to be a month in Earth time navigating a dark, labyrinthine cave system, deep beneath the surface of a world of ash. It was one of those dimensions trapped in a fantastical bygone era, one he was sure he had encountered in his college days playing Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons, where electricity was beyond even the wildest dreams of the most powerful mages. Torches and candles hardly proved adequate in lighting; if anything, the shadows the dim flames cast created more hiding places for monsters and traps. That cavern had been carved from gypsum, whether by years of toil or simply natural erosion, and his boots made little noise against the soft rock.

The tunnel he walked through now felt similar: the soft surfaces (though this one was dug from clay), the eerie stillness of long-forgotten catacombs, the pervasive paranoia of an otherwise unsensed presence, the unsettling openness, and the unknown. This place, fortunately, lacked the convoluted twists and turns that dominated the other, and he had yet to see even one eldritch horror. He even had an electric light. Yes, it was only a pen light, but it didn't cast those untrustworthy shadows along every surface.

He walked for some time, grateful that there were no directional decisions to make, when the tunnel opened. A simple intersection faced him, one path leading to the left, the other to the right. After a moment of irrational fury (hadn't he _just_ praised this area for _not_ making him choose?), he looked around both passageways. The ground showed no footsteps, and Stan's blood trail had dried up ages ago. With a fifty percent chance of being correct, he chose the left path.

Nothing about the passageway differed from the earlier portion. It continued onward, linear, until he finally came to the end, where a ladder leaned against the wall. He climbed a few rungs, pausing just below a trap door; after straining to hear anything above to no avail, Ford cautiously pushed it upward.

The room, mercifully, was dark, allowing him to slip in undetected. His flashlight trailed across the room, illuminating the workbench, toolboxes, cluttered tables, and shelves and boxes of mechanical supplies. He found a light switch and flipped it on.

A quick survey of the room under the fluorescent lights allowed Ford to recognize the workshop from the security footage. While he could see that his brother wasn't currently in the room, he hoped that, if Stan had come this way, he would have left some indication of his presence—what that might be, Ford definitely didn't know. He had to search as thoroughly and quickly as possible.

His eyes immediately went to the workbench beside him. Various papers littered the surface in a chaotic mess not dissimilar to his own study. He grabbed the first thing he put his hands on, an old newspaper clipping. An obituary, actually, for one Charlotte Cawthon, age six, victim of some unspecified accident, closed casket, private funeral. Beneath it was a medical file, labeled Samuel Afton.

Ford's interest piqued. He took a cursory glance through the five days' worth of documentation, from the boy's admission (severe cranial trauma, intermittent hemorrhaging, persistent vegetative state) to his death (cessation of brain function, removal of life support). Every section requiring an agent's confirmation displayed William Afton's shaky signature. The documents dated twenty years prior.

More schematics sat at the bottom of the pile, showing the innards of the simulacra at Circus Baby's. Though tempted, he didn't have the time to investigate. Something would surely find him soon; already, that painfully familiar feeling of eyes upon him had settled in. Twitchy, he glanced around the room. No one revealed himself.

But the eyes…

They were there. He could feel it. They were— _someone_ was there—but he couldn't call out—it was unsafe—not when he didn't know what was there—not when he didn't know where it was—not when he didn't know what it wanted—not when he didn't know—when he didn't know—

Ford clamped a hand over his mouth, sharply inhaling through his nose. For a moment, he held his breath, then slowly pushed the air from his lungs. His heart gradually settled to its usual rate. Panicking wouldn't help. Aside, he could handle whatever eyes followed him in the dark; he had dealt with worse.

His breathing tempered, he surveyed the room once more. Partially assembled animatronics littered the room—none that could see. Perhaps their lack of eyes should have made them more unnerving. Given Ford's extensive history with eyes and watching, he found it comforting. Imagining his brother's cartoonishly perturbed reaction brought the glimmer of a smile to his face. He still felt the stares on his back, but he brushed the feeling off and returned to the workbench.

A ratty, spiral-bound notebook practically screamed at him to be read. He hesitated after picking it up, suddenly feeling invasive. It was one thing to rifle through medical files and schematics, but a man's journal was sacred; he certainly knew the violation of a stranger reading his corpus of research. Then again, this was just a cheap notebook. It could contain anything. Maybe it was someone's studies. Or maybe it was grocery lists and appointment reminders. It might even be empty. He could claim ignorance if it became an issue. Curiosity quickly won out and he opened it.

Surprisingly, he recognized much of the work within. Page after page of alchemical formulas, transmutation circles, complex mathematical equations, and, eerily enough, incomprehensible, rambling mania. The similarities between this notebook and his previous journals weren't lost to him. He eventually landed on a section labeled "soul bonding," the process by which a freely roaming spirit is bound to an object, organic or otherwise. In his heyday of curses and hexes, Ford remembered studying a similar concept; Journal 2's entries on the matter had called it "soul trapping" and "forced possession." It was a messy business, a bit gruesome even to him, requiring freshly released souls for best effect.

Something rustled behind him. Ford dropped the notebook, whirling around and instinctively grabbing for the gun that was no longer there. He shouldn't have let Stan talk him out of carrying it, even if he had nearly gotten them arrested after brandishing it at an officer. Nothing initially stood out from amidst the junk; a few extra moments of examination made a particular object in a cardboard box distinct from the others: a face, rather like a hockey mask, placid, white, eyeless, with blue paint streaming down its face as if it were crying. Cautious, Ford stepped closer to it, saw it among soft black cloth attached to nearly invisible strings. A simple marionette, if not a large one.

He stared at it, waiting for it to move again. The longer he looked, though, the surer that the puppet was doing just the same to him. Frowning, Ford leaned closer to it, hoping to glean something from its eyeless voids. ( _"I'll be honest, I never liked that puppet thing. It was always…thinking, and it can go anywhere…"_ ) It didn't budge.

"You…aren't alive, are you?" Admittedly, he felt rather foolish asking it anything. The feeling didn't abate when the thing didn't respond. "You…wouldn't know anything about Freddy's, would you?"

The marionette didn't speak; it did, however, pull something from the depths of its box. It held a piece of paper in its spindly fingers. The motion had all the eagerness of a child showing its parent a picture it particularly prided.

Ford blinked, genuinely surprised. Without much thought, he took the page, a crayon drawing of a yellow Bonnie with five children around it. There was a lot of red.

"What…?"

But the marionette had collapsed. Ford reached out to touch it, stopping at the sound of footfalls overhead. Instinctively, he flipped the lights off and listened. The steps drew nearer, and he could barely make out a furious voice. Clicking on his pen light, Ford hurried to the tunnel. He dropped back into it, pulling the trap door over him.

Ford stuffed the paper into his pocket and started walking.


	14. Ambiguous Motivations

At the single intersection in the tunnel, Ford bore right. He didn't notice until he reached the end, climbed the ladder, and poked his head back into the strange basement room where he started, at which point, he groaned.

He made to return to the darkness when a soft voice spoke to him.

" _I recognize you._ "

Ford glanced around. He couldn't immediately see whatever was talking.

" _It's a strange thing to want to do, to come here. I'm curious what events would lead a person to want to spend their nights in a place like this, willingly. Maybe curiosity? Maybe ignorance._ "

He couldn't quite tell where the voice originated, for that matter, no matter how he moved about the space. Inspecting each of the animatronics yielded no difference in volume, none of their mouths moved. Certainly, it wasn't in his head; even if it were, the Doppler effect was a multidimensional constant—even Bill's communications adhered to it—but this voice reverberated too erratically to place.

Wherever it originated, it was speaking to him. If he actually responded, it may address him with more than cryptic messages.

"I'm looking for my brother," he said to nothing in particular. His words were soft, not wanting to be overheard.

When met with prolonged silence, Ford worried that the speaker hadn't heard him, either. He went to repeat himself, but stopped short of talking over her.

" _Don't hold it against us. You don't know what we've been through._ "

"What are you talking about?" Ford's voice raised to normal volume in his distress. "What do you mean? Reveal yourself!"

The floor thumped beneath him.

Ford leapt, startled at whatever had enough strength to pound through the floor. There was a modicum of comfort in knowing that the voice came from a solid creature, to be sure, but what could possibly punch through the concrete like that?

The floor thumped again. This time, Ford heard muffled swearing beneath his feet. He glanced down, surprised to find himself atop the trap door, and stepped aside. With his weight gone, the metal plate flew upward and fell to the floor a few feet away with a clang. A hand popped out of the tunnel, accompanied by a few colorful expletives.

"If this is where I think it is, I'm gonna be pissed." Scowling, Stan appeared from the underground passageway. He groaned on recognizing the room. "This fucking place—"

"Stanley?"

At the incredulous call, Stan looked up, finding his baffled brother blinking stupidly as his brain struggled to catch up with his eyes.

"Oh, hey, Ford." Brightly, he gestured to the passageway from which he hadn't yet fully emerged. "You seen this smuggler's run? Crazy, right?" Stan's light tone, coupled with the blood and dirt smeared on his face, snapped Ford from his reverie.

"Stanley, where have you _been_?!" Ford yanked his brother the rest of the way into the room.

"Yeesh, Poindexter, what got into you?"

"What got into _me_? Stanley, what got into _you_?" Releasing his hold on the tattered remains of Stan's jacket, he gestured widely. "It's been—" He checked his watch "—well over twelve hours—you can't just pull one of these disappearing acts, leaving cryptic clues and just _hoping_ I find them—you could have been killed and—and—I don't know, stuffed into one of those suits to never be heard from again! Of all the irresponsible, thoughtless—"

"Okay, okay, look." Stan held up a hand to silence his brother. "I just wanted to do a little investigating, and time got away from me or something. No need to freak out over it—"

"No need? You vanished off the face of the earth, leave behind your personal effects and a blood trail, and then you just reappear over half a day later, looking like you just trudged through a trench full of barbed wire! How could I _not_ freak out over it?!"

"I don't look that bad." He folded his arms, petulant. "Besides, I took care of the bleeding hours ago—"

"What happened?" Ford's question left no room for excuses.

That didn't mean Stan wouldn't try.

"I got sick of listening to Dave, so I went to look for more useful information. Found a human-sized vent and went to go check it out." Stan shrugged lightly. "Did some crawling around or whatever, found myself in one of the other rooms. I might have tried to answer Mabel's call—what did she want, anyway? Seems like a weird time of day for her to call—"

"Assistance breaking and entering the city's zoo—focus, Stanley, how did you get hurt?"

Stan sighed. "I guess the fox is light-sensitive."

Ford's brow piqued. "And?"

"Uh…I guess it doesn't like the light. So, it attacked me." Mindlessly, he rubbed at his injured arm. "Damn thing shredded my jacket and nearly broke my arm." He looked over his jerry-rigged bandage. "Probably bled all over the place, huh?"

"We did find blood in a few places," Ford admitted with a hint of trepidation. "Quite a bit of it, actually. Not enough to kill, of course, but enough to worry." He coughed and averted his eyes. "How did you get away?"

Stan shifted. "I, uh…don't really know, for sure. I got knocked over the head, and woke up stuffed inside one of those spring lock suits." With a quick survey of the room, he pointed to the dismantled one in the corner. "That one."

"How did you 'wake up' inside one of those?! Stanley, that's not something you just for—!"

"I didn't _forget_ , I wasn't conscious for it."

Ford wasn't impressed.

"One of the animatronics did it, apparently." Stan shrugged.

Ford's frown didn't waver.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you, Stanford. The thing was talking to me from somewhere I couldn't see, told me it rescued me from getting eaten, and then left me to not get snapped in that death trap." Stan finally met his brother's gradually weakening glare. "I figured it had to be an animatronic, y'know? Unless there's some other creatures lurking around here I don't know about."

"Just homicidal simulacra and perhaps a mortal murderer or two—I haven't fully nailed down the details yet. I've been a bit preoccupied." Ford clasped his hands behind his back. "So, you escaped. Good."

"Don't sound too excited, there, buddy."

A long-suffering sigh accompanied Ford's eye roll. "No need to be a martyr, Stanley."

His brother ignored him. "There's a hidden room at the end of this tunnel." For emphasis, Stan stamped on the floor. "It goes all the way back to Freddy's—it's a bloodbath in there."

Ford made to answer, though stopped on having another thought. Uncertainty seeped onto his face. "Have you seen Dave?"

"What?" Stan took a moment to process the question. "No—no, that blood's gotta be years old by now. Can't be."

"No, that's not what I mean. I thought I had followed him into the tunnel, but he seems to have disappeared." Ford frowned. "If you didn't see him, and I didn't see him…"

Stan waved off the question. "He can take care of himself, probably. I think you're forgetting about the blood room?"

"Right, right, of course." Retrieving the floor panel, Ford gestured back into the secret passageway. "I'll need to see that room. There may be evidence of ritualistic murder that I would like to investigate."

Stan snorted. "That's somehow not the weirdest thing to happen today." He motioned for his brother to follow him back into the tunnel. "You gonna tell me about that, or do I not even want to know?"

"Well, I haven't been doing nothing this whole time."


	15. Night Five

"I was expecting more blood."

Stan raised an eyebrow. "Sorry to disappoint you, Sixer. I'll try to make sure there's more blood next time."

"No need for that, Stanley." Ford offered an unironic smile as he moved to the large stain on the floor. "I think there's plenty here to work with." Kneeling, he inspected the ages old blood in silence. He glanced up after a moment, surprised that he hadn't earned a cutting retort; he found his brother staring at the vacant spot beside them, entrapped in his thoughts. "Stanley?"

"There was another suit here earlier." He rested his chin in his hand. His brow furrowed, his lip curling downward as he tried to remember. "Another yellow one. A rabbit, I think?"

Ford responded the information with far less horror than Stan had anticipated; if anything, his expression brightened. "That should be thirteen. We can exorcise all of them, if that's what the situation still calls for…"

"You're not even remotely concerned about how that thing got out of here without running into us, or how it's moving on its own, huh?"

"It's obviously possessed. All the other animatronics move without much issue."

Stan rolled his eyes. "Well, yeah, they all had innards to keep 'em upright."

Ford only managed to make a quiet hum before both fell silent. A clicking noise from the one shadowy corner drew their attention, prompting Ford to move from his prone position; something heavy shifted in the darkness, paused, and then shifted again, grating against the concrete floor. Padded, muffled footsteps brought the missing yellow mascot into the room. It stopped a couple of paces in, finally noticing the twins standing there, and stared.

"See, Stan?" Ford nudged his brother. "It's perfectly capable of locomotion. It even seems to have managed to find its way into the allegedly sealed safe room it shouldn't know about."

Groaning, Stan ran a hand down his face. "You kidding me, Sixer? It was like that other one, over there, earlier—deflated and whatever—there was nothing inside to hold it up." He gestured widely to the mascot, exasperated. "You can see him _breathing_. There's a person in there!"

He wasn't incorrect: though the movements were slight, the yellow mascot swayed, its shoulders visibly undulating with its wearer's breaths, unlike all the other animatronics that stood with unearthly stillness.

Ford frowned. "Why would anyone choose to wear that death trap?"

"To walk around the pizzeria," the man within the suit answered, his voice muffled beneath six inches of foam batting. "It's dangerous, you know, to walk around with the animatronics acting so…aggressively. But they don't pay a lot of attention to anything wearing a mascot head. Even, uh, even this one." There was a pause, filled with the intermittent rasp of the man's breath—laughter, Ford realized. Wheezy, strained laughter. "In fact, they, uh, tend to stay away from anyone wearing this one, actually."

"Because you killed them," Stan snapped with a start. Ford grabbed his shoulder to prevent him from lunging at the man in the suit.

"Easy, Stanley." Maintaining his grasp on his brother, Ford returned his attention to the man in the mascot costume. "Why are you skulking around a long-abandoned restaurant?"

The laughter became more audible and distinct. "You went missing." He passively pointed to Stan. "Unintentionally, you know? And when we couldn't find you in any of the rooms that you should have had access to, management…uh…they weren't pleased. We couldn't bring you—" He gestured to Ford "—into most of the rooms—they're off-limits to most personnel; it's not like we can let non-employees into them. So, uh, I waited until Michael had gotten you sufficiently focused on something else so I could check the rooms that, uh, you really shouldn't have been able to get into. Honestly, I'm not positive how you got in here in the first place."

"Those details are negligible at this point." Ford shook his head. "What's going on here, Dave?"

The rabbit stepped forward, hands aloft placatingly. "Look, I-I'm not the bad guy, here."

"Care to explain that assertion?"

"I didn't kill them," he said flatly.

Stan tried to wrest from his brother's grip; when he failed, he settled for shouting. "That's _bullshit_!"

"That's not helping, Stanley," Ford hissed. With Stan restrained, he took a steadying breath. On returning to Dave, his voice took on a clinical tone. "But you don't deny abducting the children?"

"I had to." Dave motioned to fold his arms, though the suit greatly restricted his movement and quickly forced him to give up. Deprived of his usual nervous ticks, he shifted ceaselessly as he spoke; the costume creaked with each movement.

"Had to?"

"When I was younger…" Dave's mumbled rambling struggled to escape the rabbit head. Following an awkward cough, his words became more distinct. "I…uh, well, it was an accident, really, but, uh, still a…punishable offense… Probably shouldn't have thrown it in the dumpster, but, y'know, it's not like the police ever…"

Ford tightened his grip on his struggling brother. Dave seemed not to notice, consumed as he was in his own narrative, carrying on as if there were not a threat to him half a dozen steps in front of him.

"I don't know how, but William found out. Henry knew, too, but, you know, he and I…uh…we never really talked about it. Henry wasn't really, uh, involved… I mean, he knew, more or less, but he, uh, he was always more, um, focused on the animatronics." He shifted, the suit protesting with the light movement. "William was doing me a favor, y'know—and Henry, too—keeping that, uh, incident quiet. Kept my job with, uh, the security…"

The mascot suit twitched with Dave's uncomfortable laughter, the locks within clicking. "Then, uh…then Sammy died. William was inconsolable."

"No shit."

"Stanley, hush."

A hefty sigh huffed from within the suit.

"That's when the blackmail started," Dave continued, ignoring the intrusion. "He was gonna go to the police, you know, a-and it was only supposed to be those five kids—some kind of experiment or something. I was never really sure about the details. Something about trapping souls and bringing Sammy back?" Another nervous chuckle shook the mascot costume. "You don't really ask questions about that sort of thing, you know?"

Neither Ford nor Stan shared in the discomforted laughter.

"But it continued," Ford prompted, his tone still distant.

The rabbit head nodded with a loud click. "He was obsessed—once he got it in his head that the thing was thinking, you know, he wanted to replicate it. And if he could give Sammy a more solid body, something better than that floppy felt thing…" Another shudder racked the suit. "He always needed, uh, more…test…subjects…"

"Test—?"

Ford tightened his grip on Stan's shoulder, but didn't chastise him. Instead, he stiffly gestured at Dave. "Go on."

"He and Henry designed the, uh, other animatronics—those huge ones at Circus Baby's—to replace me, after the, uh…" His hand passively motioned to the mess of blood on the floor, where the yellow suit had been resting earlier. "Uh, after the…incident…with the spring lock failures…" More laughter tumbled from deep within the rabbit. "Lucky I got out of it alive, y'know?" Dave shrugged, the motion too big to be natural. "And, hey, you know, they worked, those animatronic, uh, replacements. A-a little buggy—never really could work out, uh, that whole optical scanner identification thing. But they worked."

"This is fucking ridiculous." Stan scowled at his brother, trying to worm out of his brother's grasp. When Ford didn't budge, Stan growled. "Come on, Stanford, just let me sock this guy—just once, come on."

Initially, Ford said nothing. His sharp eyes surveyed the yellow mascot before them, a clinical reading of the man swaying within the costume; gradually, he released the tension in his hand, each finger slowly prying from his brother's shoulder. When finally he answered, his voice was decidedly even.

"Go ahead, Stanley."


	16. Redacted

_I've noticed Stanley reading when he thinks I'm sleeping, a book he acquired at some point without my knowledge. I thought it odd, as he does read in my company (I've already had my fun at his expense), and I took the first opportunity to investigate. The title must have been what drew his attention—something Afton said when we first met—but I find it interesting that Stan has continued reading beyond a cursory glance. He continually finds ways to surprise me. Philosophy and morality were never really my forte._

 _Even with just a cursory glance through the pages, I can understand why he hasn't said anything. Cartesian dualism is a complicated matter on its own; imagine trying to discuss the matter with someone_

The rest of the sentence was scratched out.

 _The question of moral culpability is still_

The rest of the page was scribbled out. Short phrases—" _How much harm can be allowed for progress?_ " and " _But what if we can't prove it?_ "—managed to escape the obliterating ink, though the context had been destroyed.

 _There is nothing we can do for the haunted animatronics at Freddy's. Assuming the "forced possession" theory holds true (if only we still had the evidence to prove such a thing!), we would have to destroy the animatronics. There, of course, the problem is twofold: firstly, how destroyed is "destroyed"? Would merely taking apart the machines be enough? Secondly, they are company property, and would be very costly to replace. S insists that we could get away with it, but, on reminding him of my apparent cri—_

The rest of the paragraph was blotted out. In the margin, " _I am_ _NOT_ _a criminal"_ had been written in large letters. Stan's hand had added, " _In this dimension, nerd._ "

 _We did manage to uncover the story._

The next four pages had been blacked out, scribbled over, and crumpled, as if someone tried to tear them out.

 _Despite Stanley's insistence, I refuse to rip any pages out of this journal, though I did mark out the offending section. He claims it may serve as evidence in Dave's disappearance. (Legally, I can neither agree nor disagree with that statement.)_

The next two paragraphs were scribbled out.

 _Damn it, Stanley—Stop inking out my assessments!_

Stan's handwriting adorned the margin nearby: " _Stop writing things that can get you arrested!_ "

Dipper flipped to the next page, finally finding a blank one. Apparently, Ford had forgone his attempts to complete his thoughts on their most recent adventure, having grown tired of his brother's continual destruction of his journal. There had been an enormous gap of information between the last two entries. Some gaps were to be expected, Dipper had learned with some previous writings, but these seemed particularly conspicuous. It reminded him of Journal 3's sections relating to his great uncle's paranoid meltdown.

Furtively, he glanced over at the couch on the far side of the room. Ford and Stan lounged with their coffee, engrossed in Mabel's intense instruction.

"It's a foolproof plan!" she insisted, rapping her pointer against the chalk board rolled into the room earlier that afternoon. Her doodles and diagrams marked out a semi-coherent plan to break into the zoo for "Top Secret Reasons," as the board explained.

"I don't know if I'd call it 'foolproof'," Ford murmured as he reviewed the elaborate plans. He gestured to the drawing of Waddles in a bomber jacket. "I'm not sure your pig can fly a biplane."

"He's still learning." Mabel patted her pet on the head. "The instructor says he's the top of his class!"

"I didn't know you could find anyone that could even fly a biplane these days, let alone one willing to teach a pig." Stan sipped at his coffee. "So, what, you and your friends want to break into the zoo?"

"Grunkle Stan! We would never do something like that!" She almost succeeded in sounding offended. "We have to get to those giraffes, and I already asked the zookeepers, and they said I wasn't supposed to be in their pen! So, I figured we could just sneak in while they weren't looking. After hours. When no one was around."

Stan pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. "I am so proud."

Dipper could almost hear Ford rolling his eyes. "Yes, Stanley, we should encourage her budding criminal behavior. That couldn't possibly become problematic at all."

"It's not criminal if there ain't any cops around."

"A fine lesson for the impressionable youth."

As his great uncles' conversation devolved into childish bickering, Dipper returned to the heavily redacted section of the journal. The last time he'd asked about one of these marked out sections, he hadn't gotten a real answer—he only got a vague excuse about why it had been so heavily edited, and then the holidays hadn't provided any further opportunity for them to talk alone. Curiosity quickly got the better of him; he slipped off his chair and scampered to the couch, inserting himself between the older twins' argument.

"Hey, Grunkle Ford?" Dipper practically shoved the journal in his face. "What's the deal with this entry? Why is almost everything marked out?"

"Oh…um…" Ford took the journal, resting it in his lap. "Well, I was less…fastidious…with what I committed to paper than I should have been…"

Mabel popped over the arm of the couch and flipped through the most recent pages. "Geeze, that's a lot of scribbling." She peered up at him, eyes narrowed. "You sure you're not hiding something from us?"

"O-of course not." Ford actively avoided meeting her look.

"Are you sure?" Dipper mimicked his sister's suspicion. "You've been acting weird ever since Mabel tried to call Grunkle Stan about this knitting club scheme."

"Yeah!" Folding her arms, Mabel moved beside her brother so they could both stare down their great uncle. "Why you ackin' so cray-cray?"

The concern worming onto Ford's face mellowed with confusion at her question; he turned to his brother for help. "I've been out of this dimension for a long time…"

Nonplussed, Stan shrugged. "Look, kids, asking why your Grunkle Ford is a weirdo is like asking why the sky is blue or why pug smuggling is so valuable—sort of pointless and nobody really cares what the answer is."

"You've been acting pretty suspicious, too, Grunkle Stan." Dipper turned his skepticism to Stan, pointing accusingly. "You told Grunkle Ford to get rid of all this stuff for some reason."

Mabel mimicked her brother, hands on her hips. "Yeah! What're you hiding, old man?"

"I'm not hiding anything." The younger twins would likely have bought the lie, had Stan's eyes not darted around so shiftily. "I don't know what you kids are talking about."

Snagging the journal from Ford, Dipper pushed it toward Stan. "Look—your handwriting is everywhere!"

Stan took a moment to investigate the page. He eventually made an unimpressed noise. "I don't remember doing that. It's probably a forgery."

"Grunkle Stan—!"

"Dipper." Ford put a hand on his great nephew's shoulder, drawing his full attention. "My journals contain the findings of my anomalous research and my impressions of the things that I study, and, as such, they are meant to be academic resources. Proper scientific investigation requires extensive evidence and documentation; there's no place for completely unfounded speculation or unproveable claims in these sorts of reports." A bitter frown tugged at his lip. "I redacted those portions of the entry because they don't have a place in my work. It's dangerous to throw around allegedly wild accusations."

The younger twins exchanged an unsure glance.

Stan beamed and clapped his hands together. "Hey, how about we do something other than read Ford's diary?"

Immediately dropping her suspicion, Mabel lit up with excitement. "Oh! Can we go to the zoo?"

"Sure." Stan ruffled her hair. "I can even show you how to properly size up a place to plan your break in."

Mabel squealed and dragged her brother off the couch, her delighted shouts echoing through the house as they ran. (For his part, Dipper resigned almost immediately; Mabel's exuberance wasn't to be trifled with.) "Come on, Dipper—help me find my sneaking around sweater—the knitting club is going to love this!"

Once the two had disappeared elsewhere in the house, the older Pines twins fully collapsed into the couch with heavy sighs.

"You have got to stop writing everything down in your diary."

"It's not a diary, Stanley."

"You know Dipper's gonna read it."

"I know."

"And you know he's going to ask questions."

"Yes."

"Then stop doing it."

"I'm not going to stop writing in the journal."

"I didn't say stop writing entirely, Sixer, I just said to stop writing _everything_."

"I can't help wanting comprehensive documentation of our investigations."

"You didn't seem to have a hard time leaving out critical information from your other journals."

"You can't seriously—"

"I'm just sayin', you're gonna get us in trouble."

Ford made a disagreeing noise.

"Mabel isn't always going to be so easy to distract."

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. "Perhaps I could afford to be more…judicious…about what I write in the journal."

Stan snorted. "That's a start, I guess."

Two pairs of feet thundered down the stairs. The teenage twins darted back into the living room, both bundled up in winter coats, hats, gloves, and scarves; Mabel carried a duffel bag with knitting needles and yarn pieces poking out of the zipper.

"Come on!" Mabel flailed. "We're burning daylight, people! That zoo's not going to stake itself out!"


End file.
